Grateful for Inauguration Day

Since 1933, Inauguration Day has been observed on Jan. 20 (or Jan. 21 if Jan. 20 falls on a Sunday). The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution even specifies the time of day when one four-year executive term of office ends and the next one begins: noon. In the American experience, Inauguration Day has almost always been a celebratory event. There have been exceptions, but when a president and a vice president take their respective oaths of office, peace and optimism have been the rule rather than the exception.

Since the rule of the Roman emperors, transitions of power in the West have generally taken place through heredity, oligarchic election, or civil war. After Augustus established the Roman Empire in 27 B.C., succession was a thorny problem because Rome had been a republic for more than five centuries. Most of the emperors after Augustus had short reigns and violent deaths because army factions usually were the force behind the rise of new rulers.

After the emperor Nerva ascended the throne (due to the assassination of Domitian) in 96, he and his four successors adopted men of merit as their sons. They, in turn, succeeded to the throne by hereditary claims. This solution lasted until 180 when Marcus Aurelius allowed his son Commodus to succeed him. Bloodshed in imperial succession resumed.

The Holy Roman emperor was elected by the German dukes beginning in the 10th century. One of the many reasons why Martin Luther was successful in staying alive during the early days of the Reformation was that his patron, Frederick the Wise, was the Duke of Saxony and an elector of the Holy Roman emperor. The papacy has also been decided by election by the cardinals since the 11th century.

The monarchies of Western Europe have been ruled by families. The monarchy of France was held by one family, the Capetians, from 987 to 1848 (with interludes resulting from the French Revolution and Napoleonic rule). The Valois and Bourbons were related to the Capetians, so the French hereditary succession lasted nearly a thousand years. The Plantagenets, Lancasters, Yorks, Tudors, Stuarts, Hanovers, and Windsors have been among several families to rule England and Great Britain since 1066.

Even with hereditary succession, civil wars among rival claimants were common, the most famous of which perhaps being the overthrow and beheading of Charles I in 1649 and the rule of Oliver Cromwell until 1658 in England. By the time the American Revolution was concluded and the U.S. Constitution drafted in 1787, the founders were determined not to see the chaos resulting from succession crises threaten union and liberty.

Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 1 “that the vigour of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well informed judgment, their interests can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government.”

Hamilton meant a government that was just, stable, and predictable. The Constitution provided for a government that was under the law, not above it. It outlined procedures and principles for its functions that were clearly and simply articulated. And it ensured a set of rules and systems that were difficult to change—not impossible, but difficult, so that the government’s processes could be knowable, anticipated, and certain. A just, stable, and predictable government would be the key to the security of liberty.

There has been tension in American history in the lame-duck period between Election Day and Inauguration Day. From 1792 to 1932, March 4 was the day specified for the swearing-in of a new president, first by Congress and then by the 12th Amendment. For good reason, that date was changed to Jan. 20.

John Adams famously did not attend Thomas Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, leaving Washington before dawn on that March 4. Adams could have contested that election, one of our most bitter, since it was decided in the House of Representatives. But he set an important precedent of laying down power and letting the constitutional processes take their course.

The only time in American history that the minority did not accept the will of the majority in a presidential election was in 1860. Abraham Lincoln received the majority of electoral votes, and 11 states seceded from the Union as a result. The spark that lit the powder keg of the Civil War was a presidential succession crisis—secessionists in the South would not accept the outcome of the 1860 presidential election.

Today, we will observe yet another Inauguration Day. Donald Trump’s second swearing-in will be the nation’s 69th. Inauguration Day is a celebration of a uniquely American contribution to civilization: a peaceful transfer of power that is, by and large, assumed as a matter of course. It is assumed because it is a picture of our constitutional system: just, stable, and predictable.

When we watch Donald Trump take the oath of office, as prescribed in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution, we will witness a lawful procedure according to principle and tradition. If we feel gratitude for being Americans as we witness that event, we will be entirely justified.