I’ve spent the past few weeks on the campaign trail following the Republican presidential candidates for The Prospect. My days in Florida would typically consist of listening to Newt or Mitt give a slight variation on their stump speech from the previous day and brief interviews with Republican voters who mostly repeated the same Fox News talking points. But the truly repetitive moments fell between these events, when I would listen to the same handful of songs played endlessly on Top 40 radio. It provided me a chance to become as well acquainted with the lyrics to every Drake song as I am with Newt’s blockbuster first day in office. But one line from a top-five hit would shake me of loose during those few blissful moments when presidential politics had escaped my attention. “I’ll be the President one day; January first,” the rapper Flo-Rida boasts in a moment of grandiose exuberance on “Good Feelin.”
Mr. Tramar Dillard-Flo Rida’s legal name that would presumably be listed on the ballot-will not in fact become president on the first day of January. While he’s too late to get his name on the ballot in enough states to reach the required 1,144 delegates for the Republican nomination, the real problem is that even after a candidate prevails on election day, he or she wouldn’t officially enter office until Sunday January 20, 2013, not the start of the new year.
The first presidential inauguration was held on April 30, 1789, and then on March 4 thereafter until the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. FDR’s first term was cut short by a few months and he was sworn in for the second go round on January 20, 1937. In the January/February 2009 issue of The Atlantic Garrett Epps wrote of the original wait period:
This long delay nearly destroyed the nation after the 1860 election. During the disastrous “secession winter,” Abraham Lincoln waited in Illinois while his feckless predecessor, James Buchanan, permitted secessionists to seize federal arsenals and forts. By March 1861, when Lincoln took office, the Civil War was nearly lost, though officially it had not even begun.
In 1932, Franklin Roosevelt crushed the incumbent, Herbert Hoover, but had to wait four months to take office. During that period, Hoover attempted to force the president-elect to abandon his proposals for economic reform. Roosevelt refused to commit himself, but the resulting uncertainty led the financial system to the brink of collapse.
The Twentieth Amendment cut that wait period in half to 11 weeks between election and inauguration days. But that amendment’s main purpose was to tamp down on lame-duck congressional sessions. January 20 was chosen to give that new congress time to select the next president should no candidate win the Electoral College vote.
It’s a nice reminder that many facets of the government that the public takes as a given are in fact agreed upon constructs, accepted as the status quo with little afterthought. Some, like the exact date on which the next president takes office, might make little difference in terms of our democracy. But others-say the right of a minority party to filibuster a bill in the Senate-have produced harmful consequences for governance. An organization called Why Tuesday, for instance, has been on a crusade to highlight the absurdity of holding national elections only a Tuesday. As the group explains it, America was a largely agrarian society in 1845 when Congress selected Tuesday. “We traveled by horse and buggy. Farmers needed a day to get to the county seat, a day to vote, and a day to get back, without interfering with the three days of worship,” the group explains on their website. That system has been in place since, despite making it harder for many working Americans to take part in the democratic process. But since that’s how it has always there is little appetite to disrupt the standard operating procedure.
It’s been crazy cycle for presidential politics. A year ago I wouldn’t have predicted the momentary rise of Herman Cain or the complete and utter failure of Rick Perry, and few could have foreseen the fear Newt Gingrich instilled in Mitt Romney for a time. Pundits should be careful about making absolute production in this unpredictable world of politics. Perhaps Flo Rida will one day become president. But it won’t be on January first.