A long lame-duck period, Mathias said at the time, “ made sense during the horse-and-buggy days of our republic,” but it no longer did in an age when newly elected officials can travel quickly from their home states to Washington, DC.Īmong other reasons for such an amendment, Pell noted that the long interregnum between presidents can harm US foreign policy because neither the outgoing nor the incoming president can effectively negotiate with international leaders during this period. Claiborne Pell (D-RI) and Charles “Mac” Mathias (R-MD) proposed a constitutional amendment that would have moved Inauguration Day from January 20 to November 20 - around two weeks after the presidential election. There’s no good reason the US cannot join Canada, Britain, France, India, Japan, and other nations in transitioning swiftly to a new administration after a presidential election. The United States, in other words, pays an enormous price for its long lame-duck period. President Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, as well as wealthy fugitive Marc Rich, during his final days in office.Īmerican history is replete with examples of outgoing presidents who actively sabotaged their successor during the lame-duck period - sometimes in the middle of a historic crisis. Bush pardoned several former officials involved in the Iran-Contra scandal more than a month after he lost his bid for reelection. While Trump’s abuse of the pardon power has been particularly egregious, it’s hardly unprecedented. And, for as long as Trump is president, the nation’s capital will need to rely on the Trump administration to protect against future violence.Įven before Trump seemed to cheer on a violent attempt to overthrow Biden’s incoming government, the lame-duck president spent the post-election period doling out pardons to his cronies and handing out medals to his most sycophantic loyalists in Congress. For unclear reasons, the Pentagon was reportedly slow to approve emergency requests to send troops to regain control of the building. Meanwhile, as the sitting president, Trump retained command and control over both federal law enforcement and US military forces that eventually helped secure the Capitol. America’s lame-duck period gave insurrectionists loyal to President Donald Trump two full months to plan the putsch that briefly occupied the Capitol and forced lawmakers to flee in terror - and they were egged on this entire time by a president who encouraged them to stage a “wild” protest while lawmakers formally certified Biden’s victory on January 6. The dangers of a long lame-duck period have come into stark relief in the wake of last week’s storming of the US Capitol. Japan’s Abe Shinzo, the last Japanese politician to preside over a transition of partisan rule, also took office 10 days after his party won an election. He became prime minister just 10 days later. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party won his election on May 16, 2014. French President Emmanuel Macron won election on May 7, 2017, and was sworn in just one week later. Modern democracies, in other words, can and do transfer power very rapidly - and much faster than the two and a half months that separate President-elect Joe Biden’s election on November 3, 2020, and his inauguration on January 20, 2021, the official transition date established by the 20th Amendment. Just five days after the election, Cameron became prime minister. On May 6, 2010, Britain held its most recent election where control of its government changed partisan hands - voters tossed out the incumbent Labour Party government and replaced it with a coalition led by the Conservative Party’s David Cameron. Just over two weeks later, on November 4, Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister.įive years earlier, a very similar series of events played out in Great Britain. On October 19, 2015, Canadians voted to end nearly a decade of Conservative Party government and elect a new government led by Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau.
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