The dynamic between the Chief of Staff and President Trump harkens back to the Yeltsin-Putin dynamic of the 1990s
Could the new White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly, just promoted from Homeland Security Secretary and previously a general in the U. S. Marines eventually succeed Donald Trump as president? It’s not as unlikely as it might seem at first glance, and it has a striking precedent — overseas. It is a vaguely familiar story today: A laughingstock president, whose citizens (and observers around the world) were not quite sure whether he had become demented or was permanently affected by alcohol, governed aimlessly through his family members. Later reports would suggest he may have been affected by overly strong prescribed medication or that he had a neurological disorder. Whatever the cause of the President’s public stumbles, he had to be removed from power. I am speaking, of course, of the decline and fall — via constitutional process — of Boris Yeltsin, the first post-Soviet president of Russia. Vladimir Putin, the man who replaced Yeltsin had started his career in national politics — after earlier serving as a Lieutenant Colonel in the intelligence services ‚ as a Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration (the Kremlin staff) only in March 1997. He quickly rose up through the chaos. The first Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, broke the back of Soviet power in 1991 and gave his country a democratic constitution in 1993. But within several years after getting the Constitution approved and facing down an armed revolt in the Russian parliament, Yeltsin had become a laughingstock, especially as his public deterioration became more visible. Putin had effectively served previously one year in a mid-level role in the Administration in Moscow and before that worked in St. Petersburg politics. Yes, Vladimir Putin, became President of Russia in 1999 starting from a lower level post than Chief of Staff of the White House is in the United States. On current indications, the U. S. President looks set to finish his career more ignominiously than his Russian forerunner, Boris Yeltsin. If Trump is impeached and forced from office, Chief of Staff and former General John Kelly has a similar constitutional path to power as Putin. It would only require two things to happen first. Trump forces Vice President Pence to resign (or Pence is forced out by a scandal) and then Trump nominates Kelly as the new Vice President and he wins support by majority votes in the Congress. If Trump were then forced from office, or were declared incompetent to serve — a maneuver that would be constitutionally initiated by the Vice President with the support of a cabinet majority — Kelly as Vice President would automatically become President. The 25th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, adopted only in 1967, would require a new Vice President to be approved by majority vote of both houses of Congress. Any vote for a successor Vice President to Pence would be politically overcharged because of the implications for succession to Trump. The resignation of the Vice President would itself be seen by many as a harbinger of Trump’s inevitable and necessary downfall, as it was during the collapse of the Nixon-Agnew administration in the 1970s. Trump is already very close to where Yeltsin ended up for the last few years of his Presidency — an alarming joke at home and globally. Between being appointed as Deputy Head of Yeltsin’s office and deputy prime minister, Putin was appointed in May 1998 as the head of national security intelligence, the Federal Security Service (FSB for its Russian name) . This is a rough equivalent of the FBI, but was the direct successor in domestic security to the notorious KGB. Putin stayed in this job until August 1999, when he was appointed as one of several First Deputy Prime Ministers and simultaneously appointed Acting Prime Minister.
