Daniel DePetris

Lame-duck Trump has plenty of time to cause trouble

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Making political predictions can be about as foolhardy as walking into a Las Vegas casino and predicting success at the blackjack table – better to pipe down, be humble, and watch how the action develops. But if there is one thing we can bet our money on, it’s that a defeated Donald Trump (assuming, of course, he will be defeated tonight) will still have quite a lot of time to enact policies and make history before vacating the Oval Office. There is a popular assumption that U.S. presidents who will return to normal life in late January are lame-ducks twiddling their thumbs for the remainder of their terms. History, however, demonstrates how wrong that assumption is.

Free from electoral considerations and only two months away from retirement, presidents on their way out the door will very often use the remainder of their tenures to notch legacy-defining wins, protect their friends and associates, and push through reforms that on a normal day would produce howls from Congress and the public.

On Christmas Eve, a month-and-a-half after he got trounced by the upstart Bill Clinton in the 1992 presidential election, outgoing president George H.W. Bush did what only a commander-in-chief has the power to do: throw away criminal convictions. 

In what turned out to be his last major act as president, Bush issued pardons to several Americans who had been convicted or pleaded guilty to involvement in the Iran-Contra affair – a scandal that nearly brought down Ronald Reagan’s presidency (Bush was Reagan’s vice president for eight years). One of those individuals given a second chance courtesy of Bush’s stroke of a pen was Caspar W. Weinberger, the defense secretary under Reagan, who had been accused of lying to Congress about his knowledge of arms sales to Iran. Clinton, who was preparing to be sworn in as Bush’s successor, called the decision a highly troubling precedent for future government employees who may come to believe they are above the law.

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