WHERE PAST AND FUTURE MEET

By Edwin Cooney

Each and every day, the past and the future meet in the present, of course. However, seldom do they meet more dramatically than on Inauguration Day in Washington, D.C.

At exactly noon today, whether or not the presidential oath has been taken, power passes from George Walker Bush of Crawford, Texas to Barack Hussein Obama of Chicago, Illinois.

The first transference of presidential power in our history took place on Saturday, March 4th, 1797 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania when George Washington, the revered “Father of his Country”, handed all authority and responsibility for young America to John Adams. At the instant that Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth concluded administering the presidential oath to Adams, all of George Washington’s authority was gone. Washington, of course, continued to possess influence, but his authority belonged to the office and the office was now occupied by Mr. Adams.

With the ratification of our constitution, we created an executive with significant power. That power was invested in an office rather than a person. Under our republican form of government, all offices, whether executive, legislative or judicial, belong to the state rather than to a party or person.

Men and women, captivated by the idea that they possess sufficient knowledge and know-how to make a difference in our national life, invariably spend much of their private and working hours thinking, hoping, and planning for the day on which the strains of “Hail to the Chief” will be played in their honor. However, the day always comes when an experienced and sometimes beloved president’s time is up and power passes to another ambitious American whose ideas on government policy may well be 180 degrees different from that of the retiring chief executive.

Throughout our early history, it was rare for a defeated president to attend his successor’s inaugural. For example, neither John Adams nor his son John Quincy Adams attended the inaugurations of Jefferson and Jackson who defeated them. I can’t find any indication as to whether or not President Martin Van Buren attended the 1841 inauguration of William Henry Harrison. Harrison, the Whig party’s version of Andrew Jackson, denied “the little magician” (as Van Buren was called) re-election. Handsome Franklin Pierce attended the inauguration of his fellow Democratic successor James Buchanan in 1857. However, the first president I can find who personally witnessed the inauguration of someone from the opposing political party who had defeated him for re-election was Grover Cleveland. Cleveland attended the 1889 inauguration of Benjamin Harrison. Harrison had beaten Cleveland in the Electoral College but not in the popular vote. Cleveland would come back four years later and defeat Harrison for re-election. President Harrison would return the favor by attending Cleveland’s 1893 Inaugural.

There have been several poignant and dramatic instances of power and authority transference in our history. Some have been galling and at least one was rather humorous. On Inauguration Day 1921, Secret Service man Edmund Starling wheeled outgoing president Woodrow Wilson to the President’s Room in the capitol building. There, he would conduct his final business before Warren G. Harding, his successor, would become president. There was then a tradition that the President of the Senate would approach the President of the United States as Congress adjourned to ask if he had any further business before adjournment. In 1921, the President of the Senate was Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. (Republican) of Massachusetts. Woodrow Wilson personally despised Lodge more than any other man in Washington. He had quarreled bitterly over the League of Nations with this very man and had suffered a stroke in part due to his hypertension from the stress. Now, ironically, Woodrow Wilson had to conduct his final piece of presidential business with Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.

Things were very tense in 1933 between Herbert Hoover and Franklin Roosevelt over FDR’s unwillingness to cooperate with President Hoover as he grappled with the worsening depression.

The transference of presidential power and authority can also have a humorous aspect. In 1961, as John F. Kennedy prepared to take the oath, he happened to glance up at the family section of the inaugural grandstand. To his shock, he saw one of his father’s “go for” men seated with the family and VIP’s. Thus, as Chief Justice Warren administered the oath and the young president repeated it, what was going through his mind was not a matter of national importance, but the question: how the hell did that guy get that seat?

Another aspect of the change of presidential authority is the sudden yet silent disappearance of that authority. The plane carrying Richard Nixon back to California on Friday, August 9th, 1974 was somewhere over Iowa when the President became a private citizen. When Nixon departed Washington that stifling hot day, he was still President and had the authority to order nuclear missiles into the air had the occasion called for it. Some of his more cynical detractors suspected he might even do that, but he didn’t. Suddenly, he couldn’t. Suddenly, Gerald Rudolf Ford of Grand Rapids, Michigan possessed that authority.

Few inaugurations in history have been as melodramatic as the one twenty-eight years ago when President Carter spent his final night as President working to free fifty-two American hostages from Iran. They would be released by Iran only when President Ronald Wilson Reagan was sworn in. It was a deliberate attempt by the government of Iran to humiliate Jimmy Carter. However, Americans still rightly celebrated two historic events on January 20th, 1981.

Today, outgoing president George Walker Bush and incoming president Barack Hussein Obama appear to have little in common culturally, politically (in a narrow sense), or personally. For Mr. Bush and his likeminded supporters, today will be a day of finality. The record, for better or worse, has been written. With all the monetary and media resources at their command, conservative Republicans must acknowledge Barack Obama’s legitimate new authority.

Conversely, at noon this day, the clock on Barack Obama’s watch begins ticking. For almost two years, this young, articulate, and intelligent man has crisscrossed the United States seeking the trust of the people. That trust was granted him back on November 4th, 2008 however reluctantly by some.

As our new President faces his new and grave national challenges, it’s in our best interest, at least at the outset, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Nevertheless, it’s ultimately up to him to lead us into the unknown. After all, Mr. Obama faces these challenges because he freely sought the opportunity to face them. Had he faltered politically, others, his new Secretary of State in particular, would have gladly taken his place to be atop the inaugural platform this day. Mr. Obama enters office and power with a majority of political support in both houses of Congress as well as throughout the country. From today forward, it is primarily up to President Obama to find a way to make it possible for us to help him help ourselves.

As an enthusiastic and proud supporter of President Obama and as the past and the future create the present which this day launches the Obama Administration, I wish our new president well. Even if you aren’t looking forward to the Obama presidency, my guess is that deep down in your heart, you wish him well, too.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY