Let’s move Inauguration Day

It’s time to get rid of the 2 1/2 month wait between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

The delay is a relic of years past and should be changed. It is a distraction from doing the nation’s business and an invitation to political mischief. Since our current outgoing president is mischievous by nature, he is entertaining the world with unrealistic demands to overturn state elections and even the vote of the Electoral College.

Donald Trump has done a good job as president and accomplished great things. He built a strong economy, reshaped the federal judiciary with conservative appointments at all levels, cut taxes, improved the international situation and more.

But the President has a mischievous streak and his post-election antics have been distracting the public when it should be thanking him for his service and welcoming President-elect Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the new Congress, both new and returning members.

There does need to be a lag between an election and a resulting change of administrations and congressional positions. But that lag should be as short as possible to minimize disruption and allow the incoming national leader to get on with keeping his or her promises.

The original schedule was established in colonial days when transportation and communication was primitive and time-consuming. The lag time was established first when the Continental Congress (the nation’s governing body prior to the first elections) set it at March 4. But when the leaders realized their members were going to have difficulty getting their affairs in order and arriving in Washington by that time, the date was moved to April 30. (That first president was, of course, George Washington.)

In 1933 Congress passed the 20th Amendment to the Constitution. That set January 20 at noon as the official time when newly-elected members of the government took their new positions. Originally the public voted over a matter of weeks, but in 1845 Congress set national elections for the first Tuesday in November.

The inauguration day change was made because lame-duck politicians — those who were losing their positions but were still in office — sometimes became a real risk to the nation. The problem was that having power and facing its loss was a strong temptation to make self-serving decisions.

That could and sometimes did mean appointing numerous people to lifetime positions who were unqualified for their jobs and perhaps paid to get appointed. It defined the term graft.

Fortunately the time-lag is not the same problem today. The world now offers almost instantaneous decision-making based on an entirely new and continuously expanding communications system. And transportation, even from the West Coast and Alaska, is relatively easy and consumes far less time.

An incoming president needs time to choose his or her key people and get their hometown affairs in order. And the outgoing cabinet members also need time to close out their offices and help ease the transition of their agencies to new management.

But 2 1/2 months is way more than needed and is still an invitation to problems.

President Trump has made so many improvements in the national situation during his four years that I suspect he might be intentionally demonstrating the folly of an overly long transition period.

It would be just like the man to rattle the bars of the presidential cage to get his point across.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of six books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.