Time in a Presidential Administration

Word count: 2,308; ten minutes to read.

Presidential administrations are time-boxed.

A new president gets four years.

Exactly 1,461 days if they start during a leap year; one day less if they don’t.

Second terms are never guaranteed.

And even if a president’s party wins the election following two terms, it’s not certain the new commander-in-chief will continue with the same governing philosophy, policies, or appointees.

Because when one day passes, you don’t get it back, every single minute of a presidency counts.

This makes time management one of the most important tasks of all appointees.

Every appointee is responsible for ensuring they use their time in an administration to constantly be moving forward the president’s agenda.

There are two ways for appointees to think about time.

The first is chronological, linear time, which unfolds in sequential order.

You can plot out beginnings, ends, and make marks on a calendar. Each day is the same number of hours, as are the weeks and months and years.

Viewing time this way allows us to plan events, set goals, perhaps establish cause and effect relationships, or identify patterns and trends, and contextualize what has happened in the past while plotting out strategies for the future.

Appointees can use chronological, linear time to develop structured implementation plans for achieving the president’s agenda and the deadlines for accomplishing tasks.

But there is another way to view time.

This is based off the Ancient Greek concept of Kairos, which measures time in moments or windows that have meaning and importance attached to them in a way chronological, linear time lacks.

These are turning points in the life of an administration. They must be strategically considered and events/actions planned around them because of their importance.

The easiest example is Inauguration Day, an occasion filled with great portent.

In addition to the pomp and circumstance, it serves as a quadrennial reminder our country is a representative democracy which elects political leaders and peacefully transitions power to them.

And it’s day of extreme anticipation.

One into which a great deal preparation flows, because it signifies Day One of a new administration, the start of a race, or perhaps more aptly, the opening shot in a war against the past and for the future.

It’s a turning point in the life of the country because, in a certain sense, a new government is born.

Faster than one thinks comes the “First Hundred Days,” an artificial benchmark which since President Franklin Roosevelt, has been traditionally used to measure if a presidency has gotten off to a strong start.

It was President Roosevelt who first coined the term in 1933 during a radio fireside chat he gave laying out the actions he took at the start of his presidency, which included a record-breaking amount of legislation passed by Congress to alleviate the strains of the Great Depression.

The First Hundred Days can show how well the transition team did in planning the initial steps of the presidency.

Metrics used to judge it will be the number of Executive Orders produced, new legislation initiated (or passed), how well White House operations appear to be functioning, and the number of appointees installed.

These data points can be used to judge whether an administration is on the right-footing.

For Republican appointees, the media and academic analysis of whether the administration has been successful during the First Hundred Days should be ignored because it is willfully designed to demoralize Republicans and encourage Democrats.

The narrative will always be the administration is somehow screwing up, violating the law, and disregarding norms, et cetera, whereas for a Democrat president, the spin will be positive, meant to boost the morale of the president and his staff in the White House and persuade the country to look favorably upon them.

Absent the start of a war or a major domestic disaster that overshadows the rest of the presidency, the First Hundred Days doesn’t matter in historical terms.

It’s just an arbitrary number used by journalists to churn out content. Whatever happens during the next four years will cancel it out.

What needs to be paid attention to by the president and his senior leadership during this period is whether the administration is generating what is known as operational capacity, which means building its ability to achieve the president’s objectives.

• Is the Office of Presidential Personnel bringing in a sufficient number of loyal, capable, and committed appointees to staff the White House and line departments and agencies?

• Are these appointees clear on their mission and receiving the right guidance and support to carry out the president’s agenda?

• Have the optimal decision-making processes and communication channels for the executive branch in general, and the White House in specific, been established?

• With the exception of what the president can do right away via Executive Orders and other presidential memorandum, is movement occurring in the form of decisions being made and actions taken by leaders in the line departments and agencies that lead to the fulfillment of the president’s campaign promises?

A better benchmark for the start of the presidency is the end of the first six months.

This is where you really know whether an administration is set up for a success.

Within half a year, a presidency is past its startup phase and should be operating as a well-oiled machine capable of swiftly responding to dynamic changes within the domestic and international environments, synchronizing the entire executive branch, and leveraging the full force of its power to achieve the president’s vision.

Key legislative priorities (think of President Trump’s 2025 Build Back Better Plan, “The Big Beautiful Bill”) should be enacted or in the process of becoming law.

The Senate should have confirmed a large number of appointees, and all non-Senate confirmed spots should, ideally, be filled.

And within these six months, the country should be able to see progress on or completion of some of the president’s key foreign and domestic priorities.

The next important milestone occurs early the following year when the first State of the Union address is held (for Trump 2.0: January/February 2026).

This is when president provides his status update to the nation on how the government is running and his plans for the future.

It occurs around the anniversary of the president’s inauguration and is key touchpoint for how in the first year of office went.

If the president has been successful in improving the economy and domestic life for the American people, then the country can presume the remaining three years will unfold similarly, absent something cataclysmic.

Because the country is polarized and more or less evenly divided in who they elect for president (since 2000 the average spread in vote count between Republican and Democrat presidents has been about 3%), half the population will be cheering while the other half despondent, minus those who have changed sides.

Four to five months after the State of the Union, traditionally beginning in late May and extending until early July, the Supreme Court begins releasing its major decisions on cases after its first full term during a new presidency.

This is another key turning point since the most controversial parts of the president’s program his first year will have a final determination on their constitutionality.

The Court will have weighed-in earlier on emergency cases brought to it through its “shadow docket,” which involve urgent requests for relief which may come to the Court by groups opposing administration decisions.

The administration itself may also request an emergency opinion as it seeks to have overruled a decision by a lower federal court.

But the “shadow docket” is a double-edged sword for anyone who seeks to use it.

The Supreme Court does have the opportunity to temporarily stop the president’s plans until the case is argued before the full Court, but the Court can also confirm a president’s actions by staying a lower court decision that goes against the president or by saying a disputed action the president took is indeed Constitutional.

Either way, it’s in the summer of the second year of a presidency when the major cases regarding the legality of many presidential actions are fully decided. Pay attention to the SCOTUS decisions coming out in the summer of 2026.

After Inauguration Day, the next most important date in the presidential political calendar is the Congressional midterm elections, 21-months after the start of a presidency, which when bookended by the start of that Congressional term, marks the halfway point of a presidency.

Though midyears traditionally give the party in opposition to the president control over one or both chambers of Congress due to the “incumbency disadvantage,” specifically increased mobilization among disaffected and motivated voters (as President Truman once said, “the buck stops here,” meaning with the president, so he’s the one to blame), this is not always the case.

If the president was considered successful and there is peace, stability, and a much improved economy, and if the opposition has received backlash due to its actions (or just lacks a good strategy), there is a chance the president’s party retains control over one or both chambers of Congress

Additionally, a unique event like a national security crisis could occur that for whatever reason helps the president’s party. The fact is 9/11 helped keep the Congress Republican and gained them more seats in the 2002 midterms.

The midterms are the hinge point of any term.

They are so critical because they impact the ability of the president to continue with pushing through his legislative priorities and get Senate confirmation of his senior appointees requiring them, along with the judges he nominates.

Not having a cooperative Congress means intensified partisanship.

It increases the legislative deal-making is required to continue advancing the president’s agenda and can outright stop some of his key priorities.

Not having a Senate controlled by the same party as the president also slows down confirmation of those appointees which require it.

And the process is slow enough already.

History also shows government shutdowns are more likely when the opposition party controls one or both chambers of Congress.

Then there is the impeachment threat.

While there is virtually no chance even a Democrat-controlled Senate would vote President Trump guilty since it requires two-thirds of the Senate to make that determination, it won’t stop a Democrat-controlled House from drawing up Articles of Impeachment and potentially passing them.

This would, of course, waste the time and energy of the administration to get the president’s business done during the last two years of the term.

The good news is the Senate will likely stay Republican. Only 1/3 of the Senate is at stake every two years, and the way the map looks the GOP has a strong edge (or so the Republican consultants I read tell me, I really have no clue).

Starting the third year of presidency is also when candidates for the next presidential election announce their campaigns.

If the president can run for a second term, this will consume an inordinate amount of his time and attention. If he can’t, it will still take some of his attention, along with that of the vice president, in addition to other admin officials.

Though the presidency is heavily reported on, the horse race for who will become the next president will consume a substantial amount of media attention which reflects back on the presidency as opposition party candidates make outrageous and headline-grabbing statements as they jockey for front-runner status in their primary.

For 2028, since Vice President J.D. Vance is the heir apparent for the Republican nomination, we likely won’t see a case of Republican presidential primary candidates criticizing or distancing themselves from President Trump, or taking other steps that divide the party, but Republican Congressional candidates may do so if they think it will give them an edge.

During the presidential election season, regardless of whether the president is a candidate or not, the fact is his time and energy is partly diverted to helping the party win both the presidential and Congressional races.

As the president gets closer to the end of his term, there is an increased rush to complete unfinished work, but in some respect it gets harder because the closer the president gets to ending his time in office, the more his influence wanes.

The president doesn’t truly become a lame duck until the presidential election is held in his last year in office and his successor chosen.

Once this happens, there is little incentive for any politician to cater to the concerns of the president or his administration. Congress and administrative state bureaucrats, will also be trying to run out the clock.

But it’s also a time for the president and his administration to do things with little to no fear of backlash. If the president has delayed doing something controversial, now is the time to do it. This includes issuing pardons, Executive Orders, and other actions he can do without Congressional legislation or having to go through the Administrative Procedure Act process.

And please forward this newsletter to any appointees you may know.

Until next time,

Bill Short

P.S. Follow me on X (I’ll follow you back): @POTUSAppointee