What happens to government when a president bows out

President Biden is under increasing pressure to drop out of his reelection campaign amid growing concerns about his ability to beat Donald Trump and ultimately to do the job if he were to earn a second term in office. 

It’s rare for a president eligible to run for a second full term to opt out of doing so, and unprecedented for it to happen this close to an election. But several sitting presidents have made the choice not to run when they could have (not counting those who had already been elected twice and observed the tradition established by George Washington of limiting themselves to two terms). The list includes: 

• James Polk (elected 1844)
• James Buchanan (elected 1856)
• Rutherford B. Hayes (elected 1876)
• Theodore Roosevelt (elected 1904)
• Calvin Coolidge (elected 1924)
• Harry Truman (elected 1948)
• Lyndon Johnson (elected 1964)

Of those, Polk and Hayes had pledged to serve only one term in office (the latter because he said it would better serve his announced intention to promote civil service reform). During the 2020 presidential race, Biden declared he was a “bridge” to a new generation of leaders and a “transition candidate,” but did not specifically promise to serve only one term.

Roosevelt had already served almost two full terms after taking office following the death of William McKinley. Buchanan, Coolidge, Truman and Johnson simply saw the handwriting on the wall when it came to their election prospects. 

Several other presidents, of course, had their one-term fate decided by the voters. And arguably, Biden would fall into a different category altogether if he ended his campaign before he officially was nominated by his party at the Democratic National Convention. John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, Andrew Johnson and Chester Arthur didn’t run for a second term (or a first full term, if they took office after the death of a sitting president) because they failed to win their party’s nomination. Of those, Pierce was the only one who had, like Biden, already been elected in his own right. 

A president’s decision to bow out of a reelection effort at this stage would not only throw a wrench into the electoral process, it would complicate presidential transition efforts. Under deadlines established in the 1963 Presidential Transition Act and its amendments, that process is already supposed to be underway. By now, agencies should have designated career employees to serve as transition directors, and the General Services Administration is supposed to have reported to Congress on transition activities. After the party conventions, GSA provides office space to the major party candidates for transition planning.

The transition process has come under criticism in recent elections, and Congress has passed several laws to update and improve it. These include efforts to improve congressional oversight and to allow more than one candidate to receive transition resources if the outcome of an election remains in doubt for an extended period. 

If Biden were to drop out, the process would face an unusual test. Usually, in a race with an incumbent, transition planning is heavily focused on the challenger, whose team typically has less experience in setting up an administration and may include staffers with limited knowledge of laws and regulations governing the executive branch. If Biden drops out of this election, his replacement would be the candidate with less experience in the top job. Trump would be the known—if unpredictable—quantity. That means that career federal employees will have some familiarity with his approach to staffing his administration and running the executive branch, but will again be serving under a president whose allies have plotted to politicize the civil service.

For that scenario to unfold, Trump must first join an exclusive club. Four former presidents have mounted efforts to win back the presidency after losing elections: Martin Van Buren (in 1844 and 1848), Grover Cleveland (1892), Theodore Roosevelt (1912) and Herbert Hoover (1940). Only Cleveland was successful.