Opinion: Sustaining America’s priceless legacy of peaceful transfer of power

One of America’s greatest political legacies is its peaceful transfers of power. Before the United States, transfers of power were rarely peaceful and often dangerous affairs. Indeed, many political theorists consider transfers of power, even within families, as the most difficult political problem. Yet for over two centuries, U.S. presidents have upheld a legacy of respecting an election’s outcome with peaceful abdication.
The importance and tenuousness of this legacy struck me one afternoon in December 1992 as I stood on a corner in Washington, D.C., gazing on the White House, the Treasury Building and the Old Executive Office Building. I realized then that in a few weeks, after 12 years of Republican control, the officials in those buildings would empty their desks’ contents into cardboard boxes and voluntarily walk out, allowing their political rivals to walk in and occupy those buildings, those national symbols with their levers of massive power. What seems normal is truly exceptional.
We should not be lulled into complacency, thinking such peaceful transfers are inevitable. Globally and historically, transfers of power have usually been violent affairs. The statistical mean is not peaceful, and reversion to the mean is always a lurking threat.
America’s first constitutional transfer of power between political competitors was almost not peaceful. In 1801, President John Adams lost to his political rival, Thomas Jefferson. After the election, rumors swirled of Federalist plots to prevent Jefferson from taking office, and the governors of Pennsylvania and Virginia prepared their militias to resist such efforts. But, as Lindsay Chervinsky recounts in “Making the Presidency,” President Adams committed to following the election’s outcome, undercut Federalists’ schemes and rejected multiple opportunities to interfere with constitutional processes.
President Adams established a legacy of fidelity to the Constitution, the rule of law and an election’s outcome.
The one time the electoral outcome did not prevail was in 1860 when Southern states seceded rather than accept Abraham Lincoln’s election as president.
Defeated presidential candidates in 1824, 1876, 1888 and 1960 conceded despite electoral shenanigans that may have cost them the election. Three of those candidates later returned to win the presidency.
In the narrowly decided 1960 election, Vice President Richard Nixon believed that illegal votes in Chicago turned Illinois’ electoral votes for John F. Kennedy. Yet Nixon conceded rather than subject the nation to a contested election. He then presided over the Senate as it counted electoral votes and certified his opponent’s win.
In the 2000 election, following the Supreme Court’s intervention to resolve questions about Florida’s electoral process, Vice President Al Gore conceded. He then officiated as the Senate certified Bush’s election. At his inaugural address, with President Clinton attending, George W. Bush began by thanking Clinton and Gore, emphasizing that “the peaceful transition of power is rare in history, yet common in our country.”
Our priceless legacy of peaceful transitions of power is at risk. The election of 2020 was never properly conceded. Now, four years later, an election approaches with strong feelings on both sides.
Despite some problems, our electoral systems are arguably the best they have ever been. Yet, even if one were to suppose all the most egregious and mundane claims that an election was stolen, sustaining our peaceful legacy requires not further contributing to that alleged corruption by rejecting the constitutionally verified conclusion, but rather to follow the Constitution, concede and abdicate power. Then use the system to challenge the illegalities in the courts, pursue reforms that improve the system and seek vindication from the polls.
That is what Jackson did in 1824, Cleveland in 1888 and Nixon in 1960. This is the foundation of Lincoln’s constitutional ethic — that we obey the laws even when those laws (or outcomes) are bad, and then we work within the system to change them. For the Constitution, sometimes slower than we like, is the leverage point that can restore us to good, rights and liberties when we have lost our way.
Let us honor the legacy left by our forefathers and sustain it for future generations. Let us commit that, despite our political differences, we will support and expect from our officials a peaceful transfer of power and constitutional rule by the winners.
For legacies, once abandoned, are hard to restore.
Troy E. Smith is a professor and the director of the Master of Arts in Constitutional Government, Civics & Law at Utah Valley University; a fellow at the Center for the Study of Federalism; and editor of the online “Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia.”