History of Presidential Transitions: Has It Always Been Like Now?

HISTORY OF PRESIDENTIAL TRANSITIONS: WAS IT ALWAYS LIKE NOW?

We think our most recent change in Presidential administration is contentious. But our national history has seen worse. It goes back over 200 years to the third Presidential election and several since then.

1801 Presidential Transition: from John Adams to Thomas Jefferson

Aaron Burr

Perhaps the most contentious election in all of U.S. history was in 1800. The incumbent President, Federalist John Adams – who was the second President, having served as Vice President to the first President George Washington, ran against Democratic-Republican candidate Thomas Jefferson – Adams’ Vice President at the time, and Aaron Burr.

It was the first election with a change in the Presidential political party.

Jefferson had won, but the election was so tumultuous that Jefferson called it the “Revolution of 1800.” In a sense, it was a lengthy, bitter rematch of the 1796 election between the pro-French (think: French Revolution) and pro-decentralization Democratic-Republicans under Jefferson and Aaron Burr against incumbent Adams’ pro-British and pro-centralization Federalists.

From Bad to Worse

Jefferson vs. Adams

To make matters worse, it was the first of the so-called “contentious elections” in American history. There was no clear winner based on citizens’ votes. In those days, electors could cast two votes without distinguishing between a vote for President and Vice President.

Due to the election’s contentiousness, many voted for Burr due to their strong feeling of “never Jefferson.” But Burr and Jefferson tied with 73 electoral votes each, and Adams had only 65 votes.

The Constitution required Congress to determine the victor in a deadlock of this nature. On the 36th ballot, Jefferson finally won. This led to the creation of the 12th Amendment in 1804, which allowed the president and vice president elections to be separate in the Electoral College.

The contest between these two Founding Fathers of the American Republic was like a battle of giants between former friends and collaborators who were now bitter enemies. The contest was filled with propaganda, smear campaigns, slander, libel, and sabotage… from both parties.

Hamilton’s Sabotage

Alexander Hamilton of the Federalist Party hoped his star might rise more under Adam’s administration than Washington’s. However, Adams picked Charles Pinckney of South Carolina as a more suitable vice presidential running mate.

Hamilton secretly worked to get Pinckney elected as President by getting southern Federalists to withhold their votes for Adams.

When the scheme became public, it embarrassed Adams and damaged Hamilton’s political career. The story is told in part, and somewhat inaccurately, in the Broadway musical Hamilton.

Improper Voting Practices

When it came to counting votes, the Georgia election certificate was defective. It did not meet the Constitutional standards. Jefferson, who was Adams’ current Vice President and, as such, President of the Senate, chose to count the votes as for himself and Burr. No objections were raised. Had there been objections, the election may not have turned out the same.

Rival factions in Virginia and New York switched voting district regulations to favor the majority. Adams failed in key areas that had previously been Federalist strongholds.

Adams called Jefferson an “atheist.”

Jefferson depicted with the devil toppling the government

Jefferson was quoted, somewhat out of context, as having said

“… But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” -Query XVII, “Religion”

Adams’ campaign jumped on this, claiming that American citizens would not be well served by a President who was an “atheist.” His camp called Jefferson

“a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father”

which somewhat inaccurately reflected his ancestry.

Jefferson’s supporters called Adams names

Jefferson’s supporters called Adams

“a hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

an epithet not usually seen in modern elections. Adams was overweight, and Jefferson’s supporters gave him the nickname “His Rotundity.”

Furthermore, Jefferson, referring to Adams’ heavy-handed administration, especially the latter’s support for the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, called it a

“reign of witches.”

Meanwhile, Jefferson hired a sleazy journalist, James Callendar, to conduct a smear campaign against Adams. One “fake news” story suggested that Adams wanted to start a war with France. Callendar would serve time in jail under the Sedition Act for his libel against Adams. This ultimately backfired on Jefferson; when Callendar was released, he pressed Jefferson to repay him. When Jefferson did not, Callendar, in 1802, published a story – that had only been a rumor – that Jefferson was having an affair with his slave Sally Hemings.

Adams’ Midnight Judges scheme

1st Meeting of the Supreme Court

After Adams lost the election, he did not see himself as a “lame-duck” president. Instead, he worked to reshape the judiciary with the Judiciary Act of 1801, which reduced the number of Supreme Court justices from six to just five and created 16 new federal judges.

This outraged incoming President Jefferson, who saw it as a partisan move to “pack the court”—though Adams actually reduced the number of Supreme Court justices. Jefferson was particularly angry about Adams’ appointment of Chief Justice John Marshall, who was Adams’ Secretary of State. Jefferson called Marshall “anti-democratic” despite the minor detail that he was Jefferson’s cousin.

You can learn the whole story in my article on the History of Midnight Judges.

Adams Did Not Attend Jefferson’s Inauguration

On the day of Jefferson’s Inauguration, Adams, having been largely unseen for the remainder of his term, took the early morning Presidential Stagecoach One out of Washington to rejoin his wife Abigail in Quincy, MA, and was not present during the ceremony. He and Jefferson would not exchange another word for 12 years.

In his inauguration address, Jefferson spoke humbly about rapprochement and unity. He promised to mend the bitterness of the last few years by declaring…

“the greatness of the charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire… that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression… We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

Oh, and to his atheism, he spoke about acknowledging and adoring God (Providence), happiness in this life and greater happiness in the next, and freedom of religion. Early in his administration, he spoke about forgiveness.

How did subsequent presidential transitions go in American history?

1877 Presidential Transition: from Ulysses S. Grant to Rutherford Hayes

Tilden Campaign Poster

Following the presidency of Ulysses S. Grant, the election was between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. In 1876, disputes regarding 20 electoral votes and allegations of election fraud caused a Constitutional crisis that was not resolved until a decision was made only two days before the Inauguration.

At the end of election day, no clear winner emerged because the outcomes in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana were unclear. Both parties claimed victory in those states, but Republican-controlled “returning” boards would determine the official electoral votes.

Its resolution required the removal of Federal troops from the South, there since the Civil War, and essentially ended the Reconstruction period of American history. This decision was called the Compromise of 1877.

1933 Presidential Transition: from Herbert Hoover to Franklin D. Roosevelt

In the 1932 election, a reverse situation occurred. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the incoming President to be inaugurated on March 4, 1933, refused to meet with incumbent Herbert Hoover, who had lost the November election. Hoover wanted to meet to discuss a joint program to stop the economic crisis caused by the Great Depression to calm investors. FDR thought this would limit his future options. Hoover had become increasingly unpopular and was called “the most hated man in America” as thousands of banks failed.

Subsequently, FDR was not above taking jabs at his predecessor: Hoover was dropped from the White House birthday greetings list, and his name was struck from the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River border, which was renamed the Boulder Dam. That remained the case at least until 1947.

Presidential Transitions: When Did it Become Such A Big Deal?

Truman shows an incorrect headline

The term “presidential transition” did not appear in general circulation before 1948. That was when presidential candidate Thomas Dewey asserted that if he defeated Harry S. Truman, he planned to begin working immediately, reshaping American foreign policy. At the same time, he still kept his day job as Governor of New York.

At the time, The Washington Post thought it inadvisable that the president-elect of the world’s most powerful nation would allow himself to be

“burdened with questions as to how much shall be spent for roads, schools, and hospitals”

in the Empire State.

This all became academic when Truman beat Dewey in the election. Pollsters, pundits, and the press were just as inaccurate at predicting the future then as they are now, but it was the first time that the phrase “presidential transition” appeared in print in an American newspaper.

The mechanics of presidential transition didn’t used to be such a big deal. For most of American history, new presidents were inaugurated into office on March 4 instead of January 20. That made for a transition period of four months rather than the current two months – or longer if an election was contested – giving the incoming administration a relatively leisurely interval in which to claim the office. It was done, for the most part, out of public view, with only the Washington newspaper press corps covering the event.

World War II Changes to the Presidency

Things changed after the Great Depression following 1929 and even more so with World War II, which started in the U.S. in 1941. Both of these significantly changed the duties of the President and expanded the federal government.

Eisenhower and Kennedy

Under Franklin D. Roosevelt, between these two events, the Federal budget grew from less than $5 billion to $90 billion. Even after the War, the swollen budget did not abate much.

After WWII, the U.S. President was the most powerful man in the world, with his finger on the trigger of highly destructive atomic bombs.

The President could and did address the entire nation regularly via radio, as FDR did with his Fireside Chats.

With the advent of television, the Kennedy presidency was covered to display the beauty and glamour of “Camelot.”

2001 Presidential Transition: from Bill Clinton to George W. Bush

In more recent memory, the 2000 election was hotly contested due to the recount of the vote in Florida. You may remember this as the issue of the “hanging chads.” Consequently, the Supreme Court decided in favor of George W. Bush, shortening Bush’s transition time.

Clinton, whose Vice President Al Gore had lost the election against Bush, was accused of

“damage, theft, vandalism, and pranks”

as he left the White House to Bush. Graffiti was left in the men’s bathroom, glue was put on desk drawers, and various household items went missing. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, assessed the damage at about $15,000, including the cost of replacing the letter “W” missing from computer keyboards. Some claim it was payback for how Bush’s father, George H.W. Bush, left the White House for Bill Clinton.

2009 Presidential Transition: from George W. Bush to Barak Obama

Despite appearing to be a flawless handover, the whitehouse.gov website was handed over right on time at 12:01, but without any data records from the Bush administration. Phone numbers and calendars were also cleared out, but electronic records were transferred to the National Archives and Records Administration within 3 months, amounting to 80 TB of data.

Speaking of data, the Obama Inauguration was the first of the iPhone Generation. It was covered not only by the traditional news media but also by social media “apps” and streaming services. I describe this in my article here.

2017 Presidential Transition: from Barak Obama to Donald Trump

While the transition was relatively smooth – due in large part to the President explicitly instructing his aids not to prank the next occupant of the White House – several “midnight regulations” were enacted by departing President Obama, similar to the aforementioned midnight justices put in place at the end of the John Adams’ administration. Obama’s administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) issued a memo to federal agencies instructing them:

“To the extent feasible and consistent with your priorities, statutory obligations, and judicial deadlines, however, agencies should strive to complete their highest priority rulemakings by the summer of 2016 to avoid an end-of-year scramble that has the potential to lower the quality of regulations that OIRA receives for review and to tax the resources available for interagency review.”

After his second term in November, Obama’s administration concluded 57 rule-making reviews, several of economic significance.

Election Legitimacy in the 2016 and 2020 Races

Charges of election tampering, not new in American elections, but new in the 21st century, emerged immediately after the 2016 election. The losing Democratic candidate claimed, within a day of the election’s outcome, election tampering and Russian involvement.

The 2020 election repeated the claim of illegitimacy, this time with Republicans claiming the Democrats stole the election. This hung over the new administration with persistent claims by the losing Republican candidate.

In contrast, the 2024 election had no notable claims of election tampering, and the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, was re-elected to the Presidency, something that had happened only once in American history:

In 1892, former President Grover Cleveland decisively beat Benjamin Harrison – the man he had lost to four years earlier.

2025 Seismic Change?

While it is too early to tell, the Republican victory of 2024 echoes three previous structural changes in American politics ahead of the 2025 inauguration:

1. Thomas Jefferson’s 1800 Democratic-Republican Party victory over John Adams’ Federalist administration saw the Federalist Party fade into obscurity.
2. Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Republican victory established Republican dominance over the presidency for 73 years, until…
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1933 Democratic victory created a strong coalition, dominance in Congress, and popular support for his New Deal. This imperial Presidency saw him elected an unprecedented four times. Since then, Republicans have only won the Presidency six times, until Donald Trump’s 2016 victory.

While Donald Trump did not win in 2014 “by a landslide” in the traditional sense, he won the Electoral vote and the popular vote. And Republicans (narrowly) won Congressional majorities, as they did with Lincoln’s election.

Donald Trump did not get the majority (>50%) of the popular vote—there were other third-party candidates, as in the days of Lincoln—but he won more of the popular vote than his Democratic opponent, though by the fifth-lowest margin since 1960. However, elections are won by the Electoral College, not by the popular vote.

Conclusion

So, are Presidential transitions in the U.S. smooth? History doesn’t show it to be uniformly so. Several of them have been quite nasty. This is not something new to our times.

Bill Petro, your friendly neighborhood historian
billpetro.com