First, it is not unusual for presidents to still be in the business of building their legacies in the final months of their term. There have been three main reasons for this, which to varying degrees underline why the length of the transition invites trouble for the United States and the world. Unfortunately, it has been more common during the superpower era for transitions to hit snags. The latter not only took place during a rapidly worsening global economic disaster but also involved transferring responsibility for three wars-Afghanistan, Iraq, and the worldwide pursuit of Islamist terrorists. Bush and Barack Obama, for example, were superb. The transitions between Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter and between George W. With respect to foreign policy, some transitions have been excellent, where the handoff of power and responsibility was neat, crisp, and professional-consistent with the principle that the United States has only one president at a time. The likely reason was the fast-growing size of the federal government, which required an incoming administration to fill ever more top-level jobs. While Americans were capable, during the early phase of the Cold War, of amending the Constitution to limit presidents to two terms, they didn’t perceive the need to accelerate the transition between them even further. Unfortunately, it has been more common during the superpower era for transitions to hit snags.įollowing World War II, as the United States became a world power with vast alliances, widespread military and covert activities, and hair-trigger nuclear guarantees, even an 11-week transition often seemed too long, offering the quadrennial potential for not just harmful miscues but disaster. Constitution, ratified in 1933, moved Inauguration Day to Jan. Four months of a lame-duck presidency was an eternity during a national crisis. It was not until the Great Depression that the United States cut the presidential transition period by six weeks. Voters only select presidential electors, who must then gather to vote for the new head of state. But it was also a product of the fact that Americans do not select their presidents directly. This interval certainly reflected the slow pace of 18th-century transportation and communications. president, John Adams, succeeded George Washington in 1797, there was a long delay built into the political system between Adams’s election by the Electoral College in early December 1796 and his inauguration the following March. But the country’s founders, who were better at crafting rules for government than elections, created the potential for an awkward twilight zone between presidencies. There were to be no regencies in the American republic: A president voted out of office or retiring didn’t administer the White House in the name of his successor but retained full powers until the latter’s inauguration. Monarchies had had regencies, usually when the sovereign was still a child and a relative or court official governed in the child’s place. When the United States, as the first democracy in the era of Westphalian nation-states, introduced the concept of transferring power from one living head of state to another, it also created the idea of a political transition-the interval between the election of a new leader and the actual assumption of power. But the rest of the world does-and Americans should, as well. Trump, who thinks only of the consequences of events for himself, may not care about any of this. ![]() If current trends hold, they may experience one of the very worst of such transitions this November when asked by a reporter this week whether he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power should he lose, incumbent President Donald Trump avoided the question. ![]() Americans experienced the world’s first democratic transition of power more than 220 years ago. For as long as the United States has been a world power, other countries have watched one president pass the baton to another with anxiety and optimism. The presidential transition is among the least studied moments of potential mayhem in the U.S.
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