Now We Know What Happens When a President Won’t Concede

For nearly two and a half centuries, Americans have grown all too complacent about the peaceful transfer of power every four or eight years, priding themselves on having a “government of laws and not of men,” as Gerald Ford memorably said after he took the oath of office following President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974.

But it wasn’t until Wednesday’s astonishingly violent assault on the U.S. Capitol building, incited by the recalcitrant and delusional President Donald Trump, that many Americans realized how thin a thread the Constitution hangs on: the grace and integrity of the person in the Oval Office.

Indeed, a great deal of what has made American democracy work hasn’t been the Constitution per se, but the good luck and sense Americans have had to put such people in office—starting with George Washington, who by himself started the tradition of limiting presidents to two terms. And John Adams, the first occupant of the White House, who was all too aware of the fragility of the young republic and feared demagogues. Soon after he moved in Adams wrote a letter to his wife, asking the blessings of heaven and saying: “May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” His prayer was later inscribed on a fireplace mantle in the White House.

Or consider even Nixon, thought to be one of the most corrupt presidents, who as vice president graciously presided over the certification of John F. Kennedy’s victory over him in 1960, even though Nixon knew that Kennedy’s razor-thin win had possibly come about through fraud. Nixon declined to ask for a recount—though he could have—and in a brief speech said the election was an “eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system.” Then-Vice President Al Gore did something similar in 2000, even though he had won the popular vote and was victim of a much-criticized Supreme Court decision, telling his supporters to accept President George W. Bush and declaring that their “disappointment must be overcome by our love of country.”

Peaceful presidencies and transitions, in other words, have worked mainly not because of words on parchment but because of the quality of people called upon to enact them and observe constitutional rules. Part of it has been pure luck: the selection of people of good will. The almost heaven-sent good fortune to have men like Abraham Lincoln in place before the Civil War, Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression and World War II, and Kennedy managing the Cuban missile crisis. As the 19th-century German statesman Otto von Bismarck is said to have once remarked: “God has a special providence for fools, drunkards, and the United States of America.” 

But that’s the thing about luck: Eventually you run out of it.

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