This is a powerful value in the US and one of those values that, speaking as a Brit, I’ve found it hard to understand. It’s not that I want a tumultuous transition of power. On the contrary. I just don’t understand the weighting it’s given. It seems to me the need for a peaceful transition can supersede a rightful transition of power.
Back in 2004 when the ‘hanging chads’ debate had been settled by the supreme court, I caused an embarrassing argument at a dinner party. ‘It’s horrific that so many people have been disenfranchised’, I argued. And I got hot under the collar when Americans spoke with pride (in much more genial, polite and measured tones than mine) about the way power had been conveyed peacefully. It’s become one of those things that I have to keep reminding myself. The peaceful transition of power carries a different weighting here. It’s an important American value – really important. I think I presume it will happen automatically, but am I wrong to presume it can be taken for granted?
My take is still that Al Gore made a bad mistake back in 2004. Creating history like that allows misguided folks like Mike Turzai (in the video below) to believe that they can disenfranchise voters by requiring ID they don’t have and get away with it.
It’s been fascinating watching the legal challenges to voter ID unfold in Pennsylvania. But it’s just one of many story lines in this election and I have to say I’ve loved every one of them. I’ve found it way more interesting than a British election because more fundamental issues seem to come out into the open and get discussed – both hilariously in the late night talk shows (oh they are wonderful here) and in more serious venues like the broadsheets and the presidential debates too.
And I look at the discussion that’s been going on about whether Mark Thompson, ex BBC Director General, is fit to run the New York Times after the Jimmy Savile scandal. And (unlike many Brits I suspect) I doubt he is. I think maintaining the peace (as he did) often comes at an unacceptable price. I like the discussion I’ve seen here about the way power is used and abused so I’m inclined to favour more argy-bargy.
But what do you think? Any thoughts? And what results are you hoping for in Tuesday’s election?
As is often the case, it’s a matter of history. It’s clear from what has happened in other newly de-colonialized countries that George Washington could have made himself president for life — in effect, a dictator — if he had wanted it. The fact that he didn’t want it set a stamp on the infant republic, and indeed amazed the whole known world. George III supposedly said that Washington’s retirement from the Continental Army at the end of the war, combined with his refusal to stand for a third presidential term (and risk dying in office, creating precedent for a handoff to the vice president), “placed him in a light the most distinguished of any man living […] the greatest character of the age.” The Duke of Wellington a generation later was appointed Commander-in-Chief for life after Waterloo, and also went into government and remained there in varying roles for the rest of his life, a much more typical career for a victorious military commander.
Well, the American transition in 1796 was peaceful enough, but the one that really mattered was the next one, in 1800. That was the first time that American political parties contended over issues that they thought were fundamental to the country’s survival. All previous republics had over time collapsed in violent factionalism or turned into dictatorships. And yet in 1800 the losing (Federalist) party accepted the results of the election, in which no candidate won a majority of electoral votes and so was settled in the House of Representatives, without civil disturbances. To use a metaphor coined by the novelist Eric Flint, 1800 was the year in which popular elections first became boxing matches rather than fistfights anywhere in the world. The next 40 transitions have been equally peaceful (okay, Lincoln’s inauguration triggered secession in the South, but it was peaceful enough in the rest of the country.)
So, no, I don’t think there was much actual chance of an un-peaceful transition in 2000 (not 2004, in which Democrats were “beaten but not robbed”), much less 2012. But the idea (first mentioned in modern times by Reagan in his 1980 inaugural speech, I think) that other possibilities exist, and that peaceful transition is something we can’t take for granted, seems to still be part of the American psyche.
Oh wow! Thank you for your wonderfully thoughtful, as always, comments, John! Your historical perspective is really illuminating.
I fear I’m bringing up an issue here that most Brits will see as pretty irrelevant and inconsequential.. We just don’t see it as something to be doubted. We’ve been brought up to think it’s the norm and what’s to be expected.
But when you shift the idea into the realm of what might happen, all kinds of other political ideas and principles come into play. A healthy debate starts to emerge about who we are, what we want and who we want to lead us.
There was a strange week or so after the last UK election when nobody knew what coalitions would be forged or which parties would be able to form a government. But I think it was very different to the hanging cads incidemts. I don’t think many people were feeling the outrage that I (and many others) felt about votes not being counted.
John beat me to it. I was going to point out that in my high school US history course there was a lot of emphasis put on how amazing it was that the first few transitions of power went over as smoothly as they did and didn’t dissolve into fighting or even civil war since that was what many people were expecting. Of course nowadays we don’t expect that at all but given how heated debates are and how passionate people get about the issues it is pretty cool that the losers generally accept their defeat graciously.
As the U.K. became a modern liberal democracy, it had among other things the monarchy as a stabilizing factor that the early U.S. had lacked. Here’s an excerpt from the 1956 novel Double Star by Robert Heinlein; it’s set several centuries in the future. The first character is the Emperor of the World; the second is his old friend and the newly appointed Prime Minister of a caretaker imperial government (or rather, the Emperor thinks he is; he’s really a stunt double winging it to cover up the fact that the P.M. has been kidnapped). The passage explains to Americans the reasoning behind having a separate non-political head of state from the head of government:
He swizzled his glass and stared at me, managing to look like a New England groceryman about to tell off one of the summer people. “Are you asking my advice? The constitution requires you to advise me, not the other way around.”
“I welcome your advice, Willem. I do not promise to follow it.”
He laughed. “You damned seldom promise anything. Very well, let’s assume that you win the election and go back into office — but with a majority so small that you might have difficulty in voting the nests [Martian polities] into full citizenship. In such case I would not advise you to make it a vote of confidence. If you lose, take your licking and stay in office; stick the full term.”
“Why, Willem?”
“Because you and I are patient men. See that?” He pointed at the plaque of his house [the House of Orange]. “‘I Maintain!’ It’s not a flashy rule but it is not a king’s business to be flashy; his business is to conserve, to hang on, to roll with the punch. Now, constitutionally speaking, it should not matter to me whether you stay in office or not. But it does matter to me whether or not the Empire holds together. I think that if you miss on the Martian issue immediately after the election, you can afford to wait — for your other policies are going to prove very popular. You’ll pick up votes in by-elections and eventually you’ll come around and tell me I can add ‘Emperor of Mars’ to the list. So don’t hurry.”
“I will think about it,” I said carefully.
[…]
That ended the audience as such. I was anxious to get away, but you do not walk out on a king; that is one prerogative they have retained. He wanted to show me his workshop and his new train models. I suppose he has done more to revive that ancient hobby than anyone else; personally I can’t see it as an occupation for a grown man. But I made polite noises about his new toy locomotive, intended for the “Royal Scotsman.”
“If I had had the breaks,” he said, getting down on his hands and knees and peering into the innards of the toy engine, “I could have been a very fair shop superintendent, I think — a master machinist. But the accident of birth discriminated against me.”
“Do you really think you would have preferred it, Willem?”
“I don’t know. This job I have is not bad. The hours are easy and the pay is good — and the social security is first-rate — barring the outside chance of revolution, and my line has always been lucky on that score. But much of the work is tedious and could be done as well by any second-rate actor.” He glanced up at me. “I relieve your office of a lot of tiresome cornerstone-laying and parade-watching, you know.”
“I do know and I appreciate it.”
“Once in a long time I get a chance to give a little push in the right direction — what I think is the right direction. Kinging is a very odd profession, Joseph. Don’t ever take it up.”
“I’m afraid it’s a bit late, even if I wanted to.”
He made some fine adjustment on the toy. “My real function is to keep you from going crazy.”
“Eh?”
“Of course. Psychosis-situational is the occupational disease of heads of states. My predecessors in the king trade, the ones who actually ruled, were almost all a bit balmy. And take a look at your American presidents; the job used frequently to kill them in their prime. But me, I don’t have to run things; I have a professional like yourself to do it for me. And you don’t have the killing pressure either; you, or those in your shoes, can always quit if things get too tough — and the old Emperor — it’s almost always the ‘old’ Emperor; we usually mount the throne about the age other men retire — the Emperor is always there, maintaining continuity, preserving the symbol of the state, while you professionals work out a new deal.” He blinked solemnly. “My job is not glamorous, but it is useful.”
Vicki:
John Cowan’s insight is correct, but the “how?” aspect of American democracy as it has been practiced from the beginning is still a mystery bordering on the miraculous; if you read Gibbon or any other chronicler of empire, transitions of power have always been violent, with the rare head of state proving the rule.
The magic of the American democratic experiment, at least so far,is that peaceful transition has been the grease that keeps the wheels of government from squeaking, and over time, it seems to have rubbed off on a number of other countries, although sometimes with mixed results.
The genius of the American system of government is that the three branxches are in a constant state of tension, with now one, than another in the ascendentTENSION; now one in the ascendant. Yet despite that explicit drive toward stasis, it seems to work (although by fits and starts).
Ginny, John and Marc,
Thank you all so much for these takes on the US democratic process. And here we are with the results in, mostly counted and the 2012 election over. Ahhh!
Living in PA, we were bombarded with huge quantities of messages and ads right up till the very end. I’m happy to take a break, but if 2008 and 2012 are anything to go by, I expect 2016 will be another interesting year.