About two months have passed since Election Day, but President Trump still refuses to accept his loss in the election, continuing to challenge the results in any way possible. While many lawsuits have been filed to overturn ballots accused of ‘voter fraud’, they haven’t accomplished anything. Various state courts have uniformly dismissed the allegations raised by the Trump campaign. In the United States, there is not a law that mandates the President acknowledging their loss and offering a congratulatory message to the president-elect. It is, however, a ritual that has occurred throughout the history of our country.
Although, there have been times in history where the ritual has been postponed or modified. In 1916, the Republican candidate Charles Evans Hughes did not congratulate President Woodrow Wilson until two weeks following the election since the race had previously been called for Hughes prior to the counting of every ballot.
In 1944, the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey only conceded to President Franklin D. Roosevelt over the radio the morning after the election, marking the first time that the opponent did not call or send a telegram to the president-elect to offer their congratulations.
In order for the president-elect to have access to communicate with the people in the government, as well as office space and access to funds, the former President’s administration must first acknowledge that they have lost the election.
When this transition of power has been delayed in our country’s history, there have been vast consequences. The transition of power in 2000 from Bill Clinton to George Bush did not occur until 37 days after the election since it took so long for the election results to be finalized. Furthermore, the Former Chief of Staff for President Bush believes that the slow transition is what led to the inability to cooperate well and respond to 9/11. “This is very serious, so we’re calling on the president to open up the transition office, give the money out, let people start transitioning, and get ready to take the baton on January 20th at noontime, even if we don’t know the full results,” he said.
Trump’s lack of a formal concession has also made many, including teachers at Fieldston, feel as if our democracy is being threatened. “President Trump is eroding the norms by which American democracy functions. Without wishing to minimize the very real ways in which democracy is threatened in the US today, from voter disenfranchisement to the Senate’s nakedly undemocratic apportionment formula, my feeling is that the discourse of ‘norm erosion’ has actually worked mainly to retroactively “normalize” everything that has come before Trump as one unified, organic national history that only the coming of Trump disrupted. To my mind, that kind of national amnesia is itself a threat to our ambitions of a truly democratic society,” said Paul Heideman Upper School History Teacher.
Throughout our democracy’s history, there has always been a transition of power from one presidency to another. While one president may not support the incoming president, they recognize that the American people have chosen the leader they want to represent them and the country.
Michelle Obama recently spoke about her experience with the transition of power: “The American people had spoken. And one of the great responsibilities of the presidency is to listen when they do. So my husband and I instructed our staff to do what George and Laura Bush had done for us: run a respectful, seamless transition of power–one of the hallmarks of American democracy.”
