I don’t know much about baseball, but I’ve noticed that good relief pitchers rarely get asked to start the next game and be a “normal” player. Baseball also has pinch hitters who lacked the skill set to be in the starting lineup. In the business world, interims are hired to do specific short term tasks. Joe Biden in 2019 promised to be a transitional leader and not to run for a second term. After Covid and Jan 6, we needed a leader who would put his/her ego aside and work to restore the presidential office. We brought Biden in as a relief pitcher to clean up the mess lefts by someone who didn’t understand the job.
Biden did this well for about three years. By the end of his fourth year he had the economy back on its feet with good jobs numbers and post-covid inflation under control. But nobody sees that, because cleaning up someone else’s mess never earns you praise. One of the rules for doing effective interim or transition work is give up on ever being popular. Your job is not to get reelected. Your primary task is to restore trust in the office. The future success of democracy depends upon it.
This is why we train intentional interim pastors in the United Methodist Church. They serve for limited periods in difficult situations. They restore trust in the clergy-office and the denomination, and then they move on. I wish we could have trained Joe Biden to let go and step aside after one term. Best case scenario is that someone else will be able to put aside ego and step in as an interim president in 2028, and clean up Trump’s mess. Again!