On 20 January, Donald Trump will take the office of president of the United States for the second time. It remains to be seen how this second term — interrupted by the four-year term of Joe Biden — will play itself out.
The first time around, President Barack Obama had left Trump a relatively stable nation and world. Trump’s term proved so disruptive, 41 of his 44 top aides, including his own vice president, refused to back him for a return to office. The next four years are likely to be a bumpy ride.
Americans have long prided themselves on the peaceful transition of leadership.
Traditionally, on the morning of the transfer of power, the outgoing president meets with the incoming president for coffee at the White House, they share a ride to the Capitol, trade places and say goodbye. Trump scorned that tradition by flying home to his Mar-a-Lago club in the state of Florida a few hours before the inauguration.
Before Trump, outgoing presidents tried to ease the transition by leaving notes offering advice and best wishes to their successors in the top drawer of the desk in the Oval Office. George H.W. Bush’s note to Bill Clinton, with whom he’d waged a bare-knuckles election campaign a few months earlier, was especially gracious.
“I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you,” Bush wrote.
Peaceful transition signals a healthy democracy.
The tradition of a peaceful transfer of power, which dates back to George Washington, crumbled four years ago when Trump, refusing to accept the voters’ rejection of his bid for another four years of office in the 2020 U.S. election, inspired an angry mob to storm the halls of Congress. Their aim was to block certification of Joe Biden’s election to succeed Trump, something that is generally considered a formality. The would-be insurrection failed.
Trump is now poised to again assume the highest office in the United States. To the surprise and disappointment of nearly half the country, he narrowly prevailed over Biden’s vice president, Kamala Harris, in last November’s bitterly contested presidential race. Bowing to tradition and a sense of decency, Harris conceded the election.
“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” Harris said in her concession speech. “That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny.”
The current transfer of power has proceeded peacefully and the inauguration itself is expected to follow the historic norm.
While the transfer is usually thought to include just a few procedural events and the presidential oath-taking, it consists of much more and begins almost immediately after voters cast their ballots in the fall.
Handing over the reins of power
If the election winner is new to the office of president, they and their team are briefed on issues and challenges they’ll face and undergo background checks to assure their avoidance of conflicts of interest and qualification to handle sensitive information.
Normally, the focus of a transition is on appointments to top government positions and on policy changes.
With the Trump transition, both have been controversial. Some of the people he’s chosen for some of the most critical jobs are far out of the U.S. political mainstream. And some of the policies he says he intends to pursue — a massive nationwide roundup and deportation of illegal immigrants, the annexation of Greenland and a takeover of the Panama Canal to mention a few — are raising alarms in the United States and abroad.
With the recent passing of former President Jimmy Carter, I can’t help remembering a time of sharp contrast to the one we are in now.
The 20th of January 1981 was one of the more memorable days in U.S. history. Carter had lost his bid for reelection in large part because he had been unable to secure the release of 53 U.S. diplomats and citizens who’d been held hostage in Iran for more than a year. He’d been up until 4 a.m. that day trying to sew up a deal for their release.
It was almost done but still incomplete as he and incoming president Ronald Reagan rode up Pennsylvania Avenue together for the inaugural ceremony in a big black armored presidential limousine known as “The Beast.”
Front row seat to a presidential transition
I was one of the newsmen covering Carter that day. So I got a firsthand view of how the transfer of power unfolded. When we reached the U.S. Capitol, one of the television networks aired a report that the hostages had been freed. It was premature.
In a final indignity to Carter, the Iranians waited until minutes after Reagan was sworn in to let an Algerian aircraft chartered to bring the hostages home take off.
What the new president said in his inaugural speech was all but lost in the celebrations over the end of the hostage ordeal. Once the formalities were over, Carter and his entourage — his wife Rosalynn, family members, top aides and a small group of reporters — walked to a small motorcade waiting outside the Capitol building.
In place of “The Beast” and a long trail of support vehicles was a small sedan and several vans. We slowly made our way to Andrews Air Force Base in the Maryland suburbs of Washington D.C. where a military transport plane waited to take Carter home to Georgia.
Although it was the same plane he’d flown on as president, its radio call sign was no longer “Air Force One.” Now it was identified as “Special Air Mission” followed by the aircraft’s tail number, “Twenty-Seven Thousand.” Reagan was president. Carter was history.
Before turning south, the plane flew over the White House and dipped a wing. Many aboard were in tears. But the tears turned to laughter when a young Carter aide, Philip Wise, humorously borrowed a line from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the martyred U.S. civil rights leader. “Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last,” Wise shouted.
Witnessing the most powerful office in the world change hands was like living a real-life version of the storybook “Cinderella” and seeing the coach turn into a pumpkin.
Having witnessed so many times in so many places where a change at the top was brought about by armed conflict or a military coup, this turnover from Carter to Reagan showed the world the power of a peaceful transition.
Three questions to consider:
1. Can you think of a recent changeover from one national leader to the next that wasn’t peaceful?
2. If a new leader is appointed by the old one without an election, would you consider that a peaceful transition of power?
3. If you were in an important leadership position, do you think you would find it difficult to step down?