A press release had reportedly already been drafted announcing Nick Ayers as Donald Trump’s next chief of staff, replacing John Kelly in the most senior White House staff position, when the 36-year-old political operative decided to turn it down, leaving Trump with no plan B. It was an astounding moment, politically: with Robert Mueller breathing down his neck and House Democrats set to unleash a blizzard of subpoenas, Trump has been forced to start vetting candidates all over again. (The latest buzz favors House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows and Trump budget director Mick Mulvaney, among other befuddling options: Steven Mnuchin, Robert Lighthizer, David Bossie, and even Matt Whitaker or Chris Christie.) But the decision was even more perplexing on a personal level. Ayers, who currently serves as chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, is known for his naked political ambition. Why refuse a golden opportunity for advancement?

Ayers, we are told, is returning to Georgia to spend time with his wife and three children. “Those of us with young kids very well understand the personal decision he made,” Kellyanne Conway told The New York Times. The specifics of the Trump-Ayers falling-out, however, suggest a more hard-nosed political calculation. While Trump had hoped the former political operative could steer him through the contentious 2020 election, Ayers told Trump that he would only take the chief of staff job on an interim basis, with a pre-arranged exit early next year. One explanation, as Ayers told Time in 2010, when he was named to the magazine’s “40 Under 40” list, is that he doesn’t “make long-term plans.” But people who know Ayers say he is always thinking a few steps ahead. He knows as well as any Republican in the West Wing that the final two years of the Trump presidency will be plagued by Democratic inquests, criminal proceedings, and the possibility of impeachment. He witnessed firsthand the humiliations of his would-be predecessors, Reince Priebus and John Kelly, both of whom saw their reputations suffer from inevitable public spats with the president. And, of course, Ayers presumably harbors more personal political ambitions himself.

In his home state of Georgia, it is no secret that Ayers has been considered a potential candidate for governor. Certainly, he has the resources—in the range of $12 million to $55 million, according to public filings—and the self-regard to step out of the shadows. Back in 2011, at the Republican Governors Association, Ayers famously abandoned his boss, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, to join Tim Pawlenty’s presidential campaign. Ben Smith, who obtained a copy of Ayers’s long-winded e-mail announcing the move, noted that it read like “he’s the one who will be running for president” instead of Pawlenty. (A classic Ayers line: “Over the past six months, I have prayed deeply about my purpose in life and how best to utilize the talents God has given me . . . As He often does in walks of faith, He has called me to a higher purpose.”) Stepping into the chief of staff role also would have forced Ayers to disclose how, exactly, he made his fortune as a political consultant—sometime West Wing insiders say Ayers wanted to avoid.

Even so, Ayers’s exit is remarkable, considering his laborious ascent up the greasy White House totem pole. For years, he worked as Pence’s chief political strategist in Indiana, where Pence served as governor before joining the presidential ticket. During the transition, Ayers endeared himself to Trump officials, including members of the president-elect’s family, forging close relationships with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Once in the White House, he was quickly promoted to Pence’s chief of staff, putting him in frequent contact with President Trump himself. As my colleague Gabriel Sherman has reported, Trump’s kids saw Ayers as one of them—unctuous, politically savvy, nakedly ambitious—and thus pegged him as the president’s best hope at re-election. “They think he’s savvy,” a person close to the couple told Sherman. The thinking inside Trumpworld was that Ayers would be the perfect inside man to coordinate the White House side of the 2020 campaign. “We’re going to be at loggerheads in Congress, and we have to get Trump re-elected. Nick understands politics,” another former West Wing official explained.