A Perilous Presidential Handoff
THE PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITION IS AMONG the least studied moments of potential mayhem in the U.S. political system. 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. Americans experienced the world’s first democratic transition of power more than 220 years ago, and, if current trends hold, they may experience one of the very worst of such transitions this November. Incumbent President Donald Trump, who thinks only of the consequences of events for himself, may not care about any of this. But the rest of the world does—and Americans should, as well.
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. Monarchies had had regencies, usually when the sovereign was still a child and a relative or court official governed in the child’s place. 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. 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. When the
