Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI Credit: UPI/Alamy Live News 2S7K5D9
This is Iain Martin’s weekly newsletter exclusively for paid subscribers to Reaction.
When on the morning of 20 January 1969 the Nixons arrived at the White House, they were shown by the Johnsons into the Red Room for the traditional coffee and rolls on inauguration day. Hubert Humphrey, the defeated Democrat in the previous year’s election, was there as part of the welcome party.
In his memoirs, Nixon recounted the subsequent exchange that day with Humphrey in which the winner suggested Hubert should be given the honour of delivering the address at the Capitol instead.
Humphrey responded with a smile that delivering the address had been his plan. But, of course, the voters had intervened.
Nixon won a narrow victory in 1968 in a politically deeply divided country. The Republican won by only 500,000 votes, 43.3 percent to 42.5 percent, with the segregationist George Wallace winning 13.5 percent and ten million votes.
Nixon knew what it felt like to be in Humphrey’s position on inauguration day, to have to turn up – for the sake of constitutional propriety – stand there and be polite. Nixon had been the loser in an earlier presidential election against Kennedy in 1960.
“I remembered from 1961 how painful this ceremony could be for man who had lost a close election,” wrote Nixon, “and I was touched by Humphrey’s graceful show of good humour.”
We’ll find out today how graceful and good humoured relations are between the parties in general and in particular between the victorious Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, the outgoing Vice President and defeated Democrat. Not very graceful and good humoured is my guess, but let’s see what the day brings in the way of surprises.
