#1635 Peaceful Transfer of Power

Listening to America

History, Politics, Unitedstates, Society & Culture, American

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Clay is joined by David Marchick, the author of the acclaimed book, The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions. The transfer of power in 2021 was not peaceful and it was not efficient. The transfer of power in 2025 will certainly be peaceful, but President-elect Trump is deliberately violating norms that have been in place in U.S. politics for most of a century. David Marchick’s book explores the history of transitions: Buchanan to Abraham Lincoln, arguably the worst in our history, all the way to G.W. Bush and Barack Obama in 2008, perhaps the finest and smoothest transition in our history. We spend some time talking about the transition in 2016-17 from the Obama to the first Trump administration, when Chris Christie worked for months to vet hundreds of potential appointees and provided a brilliant roadmap for Trump, only to see his dozens of binders literally tossed into the dumpster by Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everyone, and welcome to this introduction to the podcast this week about peaceful transfer
0:05.7	of power with my guest, David Marchik, whose book is spectacular. You must get it and read it.
0:12.2	The Peaceful Transfer of Power and Oral History of America's Presidential Transitions, 2022, the Miller
0:18.5	Center at the University of Virginia. Outstanding man, great interview.
0:22.2	All right.
0:22.8	So a couple of things.
0:23.9	So we're focusing on this because we found that there is a weakness in the American system.
0:29.6	Going back to my conversations with Lindsay, for example,
0:32.7	President Washington had to make up much of the presidency
0:35.7	because the Constitution was silent on these
0:38.0	questions. Should there be a cabinet? How often it should it meet? Should the president appear
0:43.5	in person before Congress to give his State of the Union message, or should he just send it
0:48.2	in? Should the president have a social life? Should he return calls? Should he accept invitations to go to dinner? What
0:55.9	should he wear? So most of what we accept, most of what we expect is what are called norms,
1:04.9	not constitutional provisions. Nothing requires the loser to concede. Nothing requires the loser to call the winner to congratulate that person. Nothing requires the loser to concede. Nothing requires the loser to call the winner to congratulate that person.
1:14.3	Nothing requires the loser to appear at the winner's inauguration.
1:18.3	In fact, four times in American history, it hasn't happened.
1:21.4	Two of them were by John and John Quincy Adams, by the way.
1:25.4	Then Andrew Johnson.
1:26.3	And finally, Donald Trump, for the inauguration of Joe Biden in 2021.
1:32.8	These are norms. They're not required. No law forces this. And we all thought that no one would ever really violate this because we all get basic civility and we all get basic civics.
1:46.1	And what we discover with Donald Trump, who is a self-declared disruptor,
	...

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