To: J.D. Vance

From: Me, concerned citizen

If you have not already started—although I am sure you have—you need to be thinking of how you would serve as the interim President of the United States until the 2028 elections and how you might deserve to be considered for an extension.

I am sure you have watched your boss’s deteriorating poll numbers and the inter-party defections, especially among those Republicans who hope to resurrect their own candidacies for the House or the Senate by turning on President Trump. Unfortunately, theirs seems to be a case in several instances of “Too soon old; too late smart.”

You are, I am sure, cognizant of the possibility that the blue wave will continue to build and have started thinking of what would happen if Democrats and some badly-disillusioned Republicans provide the needed votes to let President Trump transition to being a fulltime golfer.

What will you do or advocate doing to separate yourself from a President you have so slavishly followed for a couple of years but who now is a lead weight for the party?

You’re in a tricky position. You know you cannot be Trump 2.1 after the Original Trump is banished if you want the job fulltime in 2028 or not to face the same removal movement that deposed him sooner.  Two years is a short time to wash the Trump stain from your credentials and to create a new you-image.  You will inherit what is charitably called an international train wreck. You must be thinking how to end military and tariff wars without a total admission of grievous error but acknowledging serious mistakes for which you will accept no blame while emphasizing the things you will do to promote national and international healing.

Remember this: A mob, having enjoyed the thrill of hanging one, might not be satisfied with hanging only one.  The crowd might still be quite restless when you make the oval office your own. You must be thinking and assembling others from outside the present executive team who will find ways for you to look good digging out from under the rubble of this president’s disaster.

Renewing domestic and international trust and respect in such a short time might be beyond your best efforts, but it is important that you tell us what you will do if you are going to make sincere efforts and achieve some improvements.

If doing what you have to do means throwing Trump under the bus to join all of those he has thrown there, so be it. You must be prepared to show a major shift not only in ideology but also in style. You are, after all, the Hillbilly Eulogy guy, not the rich big city guy whose life experience has been far from your own and has no relation to the lives of most Americans.

You must be carefully lining up cabinet members who are not amateurs in their roles. Some of those replaced by the current administration might be good choices to return and be your guiding team. Start now to establish back-door relationships with Iran, China, North Korea, Russia and Israel that could be useful after you are sworn in as the successor to President Trump.

Make plans to dump the FCC Chair who seems all too willing to be the mini-Trump in the war against the media. In fact, you should announce as soon as you are in office that the war against the media is over, that you recognize the importance of a free and independent media, that the role of the media is not to be your friend and mouthpiece but to be an observer and when necessary be a critic.

Make your new Director of Homeland Security someone one with a Spanish surname and put ICE on ice.

Make a personal commitment to give late night talk show hosts something to talk about other than you. But understand that making fun of people in power is a very old matter of human nature. Poking fun at politicians probably began before written language was created.

Be strict with yourself about this: Nights are for sleeping. Days are for talking and acting. Do not try to mix the two. Remember that verbal temperance even in disagreement is more likely to engender respect than irrational attacks will.

If you wish to call someone a derogatory name, do it in your shower, not in public.

Find someone who knows and has the respect of and for the military to be ready with a mop, a broom, and a carpet cleaning system to replace Pete Hegseth. It should be someone who doesn’t measure military competence in terms of color, gender, or testosterone level. Before he goes, report on HIS testosterone levels.

Have somebody with some honor in the medical field replace Health Secretary Kennedy, who undoubtedly will complain he is a victim of a conspiracy. Admit he’s right and then vaccinate yourself from his influence.

Don’t be afraid to keep some of the competent people President Trump accidentally appointed to top positions. Would Rubio be more effective without Trump above him?  Of course, letting him stick around leaves him poised to be one of your challengers in the 2028 primaries.,

Prepare a list of executive orders to immediately roll back Trump’s plans for—

—-well, just about everything he has proclaimed.

Be thinking about the points you will earn with the public by cancelling the EgoArch, by restoring a sane board to the Kennedy Center, and announcing you are ending all efforts to etch the name Trump on any buildings he did not earn the right to rename, which would be none.

And restore the proper names to one of the Great Lakes and to The Gulf.

You’ll need to emphasize that you are not trying to erase President Trump’s name from history but are restoring our history to its accurate place in telling  ALL of the nation’s story, including his. Do not volunteer to speak at the dedication of his presidential museum and lie-brary.

Unsticking yourself from Trump might be difficult because of the tar baby he has been. But you need to give it your best efforts. Otherwise, your long-term future in what is left of the White House will be brief.

Retire attack dogs such as our Senators Schmitt and Hawley to a political kennel. You don’t need their kind to be distracting the public from the good works you do to restore a modicum of confidence in our country.

When President Trump was elected in 2016 without my approval, I was among the many who hoped he would grow into the office. But he has proven accurate an observation President Woodrow Wilson made: “Every man who takes office in Washington either grows or swells, and when I give a man an office, I watch him carefully to see whether he is growing or swelling.”

President Trump is an example of one who swelled excessively and constantly. And look what it got him. Hire people who won’t be afraid to tell you before it’s too late that you’re looking a little puffy.

Good luck with your contingency planning. Do not be wasting time in making preparations. Your future is at stake, by 2028 if not sooner.

Citizen Bob