The American Elections: A Power Shift We Have Never Seen Before

The day after Donald Trump won the election against Hillary Clinton in November 2016, incumbent President Barack Obama called the White House Communications Department. Many were young employees. Some had never set foot in the Oval Room before. Several cried as they entered the president’s office.

Obama, on the other hand, smiled. He joked about the good weather: “the sun is shining.” He urged his staff to act as professionally against Trump’s transitional administration as George W. Bush had against him and his advisers eight years earlier.

Obama’s cheerful attitude It barely reflected her inner mood. Indeed, Obama was full of doubts about the election outcome, such bitter sentiments and suspicions that Trump is now voting in public.

“Obama went through stages”, writes Ben Rhodes, one of his closest collaborators, in the memoirs “The world as it is”:

“In breaks between meetings, he expressed distrust that the election was lost,” Rhodes wrote of Obama. “With an unemployment rate of five percent. With the economy buzzing. With the Affordable Care Act in place … he kept talking about himself, trying different theories. “

But Obama never questioned Trump’s legitimacy as president in public. Instead, he asked Hillary Clinton to admit defeat on election night. Some of Hillary Clinton’s advisers wanted her to wait. “They’re still counting the ballots,” Clinton aide John Podesta told Clinton supporters. “Every ballot counts.”

But Obama was rock hard on the phone that night. “You have to admit (that you defeated),” he told Hillary Clinton. “There is no point in lengthening it.”

A few months later, on January 20, Hillary Clinton attended Trump’s inauguration ceremony in Washington DC.

“I take a deep breath,” writes Hillary Clinton in the memoir “What Happened,” which begins with Trump’s installation. “Exhale. Scream after.” Clinton reminds herself: “This is the right thing to do. The country needs to experience that democracy continues to work, painful as it may be. “

As Obama’s secretary of state Hillary Clinton had traveled the world urging other countries to be inspired by American traditions, where a “peaceful handover” of presidential power is at the very core of democracy.

“If I really believed in that, I had to ignore my feelings and participate,” Clinton writes.

George W Bush and Jimmy Carter were also present at Trump’s inauguration ceremony. That made things a bit easier for Clinton. Bush had called Hillary Clinton a few minutes after her defeat the day after the election. The former president had been waiting in line when Hillary hugged her campaign staff for the last time.

“When we spoke, he suggested that we get together and have a hamburger together,” Clinton writes. “I think it’s the Texas language for: ‘i feel your pain‘”.

Presidential elections 2020 It is established. Joe Biden leads with more than five million votes and 306 electoral votes to 232. Trump has no realistic chance of catching up. But he refuses to admit defeat. Will Trump attend the inauguration ceremony on January 20?

Trump’s behavior has shed light on past transfers of power. The change after the 2008 election, when Obama beat Republican John McCain, appears to be the opposite of Trump’s actions today. In his recent memoir “A Committed Country”, Obama describes his feelings of gratitude towards George W Bush:

“Whether it be out of respect for the institution, the father’s lessons, bad memories of his own transition (some of (Bill) Clinton’s staff were rumored to have removed the W key from computers when leaving) or just courtesy, he did everything he knew in those eleven weeks so that everything was as painless as possible, ”Obama writes about Bush.

In the west wing of the White HouseWhere the president and his advisers work, the Bush administration had put its lessons on paper. “In all the offices of the White House”, writes Obama in “A committed country”, there were detailed manuals. His staff made themselves available to meet their successors, answer questions and even let themselves be overshadowed in the performance of their duties ”.

The west wing consists of small office spaces. But the power that emanates from him is sovereign. The incoming government assumes responsibility for the military, two million civil servants, and has a budget of $ 4.7 billion. At lunchtime on January 20, a new government will take control of the superpower.

But a president surrenders at the same time, his legitimacy vis-à-vis another president, despite the fact that he often ran as an opponent of the incumbent president. This change is more symbolic. It takes place in front of the cameras and often involves more family members than the presidents in question. In 2008, for the first time, a white president, based in the south, would hand over the house to a black family.

During the campaign, Barack Obama had criticized George W Bush “often and in depth”, writes Michelle Obama in her memoir “My Story”. That didn’t stop Laura Bush from accepting Michelle Obama as a friend. “‘Call me Laura, please.'”

The Bush family’s daughters, Barbara and Jenna, showed Obama’s daughters, Sasha and Malia, a sloping hallway in the residence where they could secretly ride the slide. “There was a genuine goodness behind all of this, a true love for our country that I will always cherish and admire,” wrote Michelle Obama.

This is usually the loser in the White House finally achieve acceptance. Small feelings of bitterness are subordinate to great feelings of responsibility for the country. At the end of his memoirs, Bill Clinton seeks solace in a stone that lunar explorer Neil Armstrong has taken home. Last night in the Oval Office, Bill Clinton reflects on the 3.6 million year old artifact: “We are just passersby.”

During his last trip abroad, Obama is furious. Have a three hour dinner with Angela Merkel and hand her the torch of liberal world order. “Maybe that’s what people want,” he says bitterly of Trump in adviser Ben Rhodes’ book. “There are no facts. Without consequences ”. But then he seeks comfort in his own littleness. “The fact that we are only ‘a beep’ in the history of mankind.”

The Obama couple receives Donald and Melania with the same courtesy that Bush showed them. It wasn’t easy, Michelle Obama wrote on Instagram this week. “Donald Trump had spread racist lies about my husband that endangered the safety of my family.” But she bit “because our democracy is much bigger than anyone’s ego.”

The longer Trump waits to recognize Biden as the winner, the deeper the tears run in American democracy. In an opinion poll released this week, 77 percent of Trump voters said Biden won the election by cheating.

The Republican Party is still behind Trump. Rank-and-file anger over the loss is expected to mobilize voters in the state of Georgia, where two elections in January will decide which party will take power over the Senate in Washington DC.

Win Republicans in Georgia the party can stop Biden’s policy through a majority in the upper house. Here’s how the Republican Party’s time horizon extends right now: through January. Trump, seemingly indifferent to his legacy, lives in one constantly now.

But refusing to recognize Biden as the incoming president carries significant security risks. Biden’s transitional government is denied access to office space where state secrets can be discussed. Or the daily intelligence that incumbent presidents often share with their successor.

The Defense Department has signaled that it does not intend to meet with Biden’s staff as long as Trump does not recognize him as the next president. Foreign Minister Mike Pompeo has assured that he intends to contribute to Trump’s transition to a second term. This undermines the willingness of staff to cooperate.

Andy Card, White House Chief of Staff George W. Bush, says Trump’s decision to block Biden could jeopardize national security. Card recalls the commission that subsequently assessed America’s readiness for the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11, 2001.

The messy transition phase between Bill Clinton and George W Bush in the fall of 2000 weakened the readiness. Then there was the election between Democrat Al Gore and George W Bush, and the result was so even that ballots were re-counted in Florida. The Supreme Court finally ruled the result. On December 13, Gore admitted that he had lost the presidential election.

Thus, Bush lost 37 days of preparation. Had the transfer of power been smoother, America’s preparation would have been better, says Andy Card, and perhaps an attack could have been stopped early.

On Friday, there are 61 days until Trump formally hands over power to Joe Biden.