So that you suppose a bitter Trump is behaving disgracefully over relinquishing the White Home? Historical past reveals he’s not the primary…

‘Okay, loser, it’s time to surrender energy. Which means you, Mr Ex-President.’ It’s by no means a simple message for leaders to swallow, and the present one is clearly discovering it more durable than most. However he has some illustrious firm.

The transition of energy in America, in these darkish, chilly weeks between the election in November and the brand new president’s inauguration in January, is a fragile course of. It’s an opportunity for the self-styled ‘world’s best nation’ to point out others how a grown-up, mature democracy acts. 

And an opportunity for the outgoing, quickly to be ex-leader of “of the free world” to exhibit that he (no she’s but, Kamala, wait your flip) is above feeling bitter, bitter, or uncooperative. Even. Although. He’s. A. LOSER. And staring down the barrel of  “consulting” for Goldman Sachs, infinite ribbon-cutting ceremonies and dreary after-dinner speeches, tedious charity work, and the compulsory organising of a (ex) presidential library that nobody needs to go to. 

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A life in decline, the place your solely little bit of enjoyable is grabbing the asses of girls which might be in your line of fireside since you’re in a wheelchair. 

At finest, the handover of energy includes a great working relationship, or at the least a mutual respect, between the incumbent, lame-duck prez, and the newly-elected chief who’s headed for the White Home. 

The phrases that must be on the forefront listed here are ones equivalent to honourable, graciousness, decentness and humility – witness one-term George H Bush’s handwritten letter left for his usurper Invoice Clinton in 1993: “You may be our President while you learn this word. I want you properly. I want your loved ones properly.”

After which there’s the Donald Trump manner.

The phrases that come to thoughts listed here are one equivalent to immature, sore loser, spoiled brat, and thin-skinned. Doing the presidential equal of stamping his foot and taking his ball dwelling, it seems to be quite a bit like Trump is, properly, doing his finest to f**okay it up for the incoming Biden administration. 

He’s blacklisting Chinese language firms within the US earlier than a China-friendlier Biden even takes workplace. 

He’s ordering troops again dwelling from Afghanistan and different scorching spots, in opposition to the needs of most generals.

He’s presided over a Division of Justice rule change that can successfully convey again firing squads and electrical chairs for states that may’t pay money for the medicine for deadly injections (and but, go determine, he’s in opposition to abortions…).

He’s apparently contemplating handing our preemptive pardons to favoured consigliere equivalent to Rudy Guliani and the like, and possibly even one for himself and his household. 

And he’s nonetheless not even accepted the fact that – sorry, Mr President – he LOST final month’s election, huge time. Why concede when you possibly can nonetheless whine, in any case? He’s managing to persuade half of America (the crimson half, natch) that the election was stolen from him, merely by means of repeating it loudly and infrequently, regardless of no proof to help his claims. ‘RIGGED ELECTION!’, ‘FAKE RESULT!’, ‘STOP THE STEAL!’, ‘WE WON!”. Donald’s the orange-hued Dory of this satirical s**tshow: “Simply preserve tweeting… simply preserve tweeting…” Then it should all be true, huh?

What’s the following scene, a flouncy refusal to attend his successor’s inauguration on January 20? Besides possibly on the head of a bunch of armed Proud Boys, marching down 16th Avenue (sorry, Black Lives Matter Plaza), standing by able to reoccupy the White Home? 

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I suppose it means we’re not prone to see some uber-awkward and ultra-civil photographs like those of Trump and Barack Obama again in 2016 – when Obama needed to be a great ol’ boy, grit his enamel, and welcome his nemesis into the White Home. 

However many presidential transitions have been powerful. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the founding fathers and supposed BFFs, fell out so badly throughout the course of the election in 1800 that Adams didn’t even go to Jefferson’s inauguration. 

In 1828, when Andrew Jackson received the election, the vitriol, together with prices of adultery, thrown at him by his opponent, John Quincy Adams, was so vicious that he turned satisfied it contributed to his spouse dying of a coronary heart assault simply earlier than Christmas. Understandably bitter, Jackon refused to pay a courtesy name on Adams throughout the three weeks earlier than his inauguration, which the defeated man then refused to attend.

However historical past additionally reveals us that, typically, making a transition awkward may be all about doing little or no. 

Take the good despair election of 1932, when Herbert Hoover needed to make manner for Franklin D Roosevelt. Hoover hated FDR, largely for being disabled. He known as the partially paralyzed FDR a “chameleon on plaid”, accused him of dealing “from the underside of the deck”, and mentioned that the Democrat’s tendencies would put the USA “on a march to Moscow.” 

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So, within the midst of the worst banking disaster ever, lame-duck Hoover sat again and did nothing to enhance the dire financial scenario or intervene. Paving the best way for FDR to inherit a fair larger mess. 

In response, FDR known as Hoover a “fats, timid, capon.” Which, in fact, is a castrated rooster. A fats and timid one, at that.

The interval of a presidential transition can also be a harmful one in terms of overseas coverage. 

It’s unlikely that Israel would have whacked that Iranian nuclear scientist final week with out Trump’s tacit approval – maybe within the hope of upsetting Tehran into doing one thing rash. Each Bibi Netanyahu, the Israeli chief, and the Donald are mentioned to really feel a rising nervousness concerning the impending arrival of the Biden workforce, which needs to convey the Iranian nuclear deal again from the deep freeze. 

The disastrous Bay of Pigs fiasco in April, 1961, the failed US-backed invasion of Cuba, occurred simply three months into the John F. Kennedy presidency. Many historians have blamed it on the facility vacuum of the transitional interval. An authentic, stealthy plan had been accredited by Eisenhower. By the point his outdated guard within the CIA bought it to a freshly inaugurated Kennedy, it had ballooned right into a full-blown invasion. 

However there’s awkward transitions, after which there’s Invoice Clinton. 

His workforce’s lack of largesse, we could name it, when handing over the reins to George W Bush after a bitterly contested authorized battle with Invoice’s chosen successor Al Gore over the election in 2000, has grow to be the stuff of legend. 

To start with, there’s the presidential pardon controversy. Clinton, aided by his lobbyist brother and brothers-in-law, pardoned 140 folks on his final day in workplace. His checklist of excused included world-wide pariah Marc Wealthy, a cocaine trafficking kingpin, just a few main terrorists, and, oh yeah, his personal brother, Roger. 

However even then, the Clinton workforce didn’t depart the White Home gracefully. Democrat staffers reportedly ripped telephones from the partitions, minimize presidential seals from the carpets and left anti-Bush graffiti within the stalls of the lads’s bogs.

However maybe finest and bitterest of all, they eliminated the letter W from 62 of the White Home’s computer systems – which was a little bit of an issue since George W was referred to easily as “W” to distinguish him from his dad. 

It was clearly a prank. A number of the lacking W keys had been finally discovered on prime of extraordinarily excessive door frames. The Clinton workforce denied many of those claims, however the Basic Accounting Workplace reported that the White Home had suffered $ 15,000 value of injury. A 3rd of that needed to be spent on changing keyboards. 

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So transitions of energy are a spectrum, with the Clinton-to-Dubya transition at one finish of the size (we’ll name it the ‘faculty frat social gathering’ finish), the ‘Fats capon’, do-nothing Hoover-Roosevelt someplace within the center, and the frankly pleasant, if awks, Obama-to-Trump transition on the ‘tea with the Queen’ finish. 

We’re but to see the place the 2020/2021 handover of energy goes to finish up. However I believe it would, simply may, trump the lot of them for its sheer awfulness.  

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