I noticed that Joe Biden took the presidential oath of office at about 11:45am Eastern on January 20, ten to fifteen minutes before his term actually started. It seems this was the result of unexpected efficiency: the inaugural ceremony ran not just on time, but ahead of schedule. It didn’t make him president for those fifteen minutes—by law, the outgoing president’s term doesn’t end until noon—but that just makes me wonder: what is the oath for? What exactly are these words?
One thing they’re not: magic words. You don’t become president just by saying them in the right order. And, perhaps more importantly, you don’t not become president just because you said them wrong. The Constitution requires that—
Before he enter on the execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” U.S. Constitution II.1
You could take “before” here in a conditional sense, as in do this or else you can’t take office, or in a temporal sense, as in do this before noon on the twentieth, but technically your term will start even if you don’t. For obvious practical reasons, we take the temporal view. The Office of President is never vacant—the king is dead; long live the king. Power transfers from predecessor to successor, or down the line of succession, without pause.
This is good when a president dies while in office, as it can be hours before time and a federal judge can be found amid the chaos to administer the oath to the once–vp–now–potus. And it’s good when presidents-elect flub the words, which they do, apparently, a lot. Enter the delightfully named Wikipedia subsection, “Oath mishaps,” a list of all the times we know of that presidents screwed up when taking their oaths.
Some of my favorites from this trove—
2009: Chief Justice John Roberts tried to administer the oath to Barack Obama from memory. It was just a whole hot mess, and they had a do–over the next day at the White House. Roberts has used notes for every inauguration since.
1953 & 1957:“Dwight D. Eisenhower read the line ‘the office of President of the United States’ as ’the office of the President of the United States,’ even as Chief Justices Fred Vinson (in 1953) and Earl Warren (in 1957) said the line correctly.” Maybe I’m assuming too much, but I get a certain gruff “I’m General Eisenhower, I don’t take nonsense, and if it doesn’t sound right to me I’m gonna make it sound right” vibe here, especially because he made the same mistake twice. Or maybe his brain just added the the instinctually. Brains do that, as Nixon’s added an extra and into the series “preserve and protect and defend” (1973).
All of the “mishaps” listed seem like reasonable, if embarrassingly public, mistakes. All except one, which is just inexplicable—
1945: Chief Justice Harlan Stone, uh, invented a middle name for Harry S. Truman? Not knowing (as, to be fair, I didn’t know until reading this) that the S. didn’t stand for anything, Stone prompted Truman to say “I, Harry Shipp Truman…” I have so many questions! Why did the Chief not know about the bare initial? Or ask about it? Why did he think it stood for Shipp? How does Wikipedia know that Shipp, this not–real–middle–name, was spelled with two ps??? Truman, with presidential grace and perhaps a bit of extra emphasis, corrected the mistake by repeating “I, Harry S. Truman do solemnly swear…”
There are, how to say it, many problems with the way we elect presidents in the United States.
One is the length of time between Election Day and the Inauguration of a new president. The process set out in the Constitution allows plenty of space for election disputes to be resolved, for information to travel across the country, and for the long bureaucratic work of the Transition™.
There’s plenty of time too, though, for delay and doubt. An outgoing president might not much like their successor, or they might not feel like leaving office at all. Given the great powers of the presidency, this long lame duck period is tempting time for shenanigans. Even absent any mischief, the time between November and January can be a time of unclear authority. It would be better all around for the handover of power to be accomplished more quickly.
Here I suggest a possible alternative timeline of events. I aim for balance between two conflicting demands on time: enough to resolve disputes and make sure everything’s done right, but not so much that the country is dragged into doubt or danger.
So here’s how I imagine the next election could be run—
Election Day stays the same. Change the date if you want; make it fall on a weekend or make it a national holiday or whatever, but the process stays the same. States run elections within the bounds of State, Federal, and Constitutional law.
Disputes, challenges, and close calls are likewise handled much as now: at the local, county, and State level, through whatever processes the several States establish. Audits are done & courts hear cases as needed.
The Electoral College meets, and here’s where things change from the current setup. As soon as possible after challenges are resolved and election returns are certain in a given State, that State’s electors meet and cast their electoral votes. Electors from all the States never meet as one body anyway, so there’s no need to wait for a consistent day across the Union. As soon as a State’s electors can make it to their statehouse, they vote and send all the necessary paperwork to Washington.
Congress receives electoral votes on a rolling basis. Because different State’s electors meet at different times, certificates of vote arrive in Washington at different times as well, trickling in to the Senate’s mailbox. The Secretary of the Senate keeps a running tally of the votes received. Each day that votes are received, the Secretary notifies the Senate of— which States’ votes came in, how many and who for, and the Secretary’s current totals for each candidate. The Senate notifies the House of the same.
A Joint Session to count electoral votes is triggered when the Secretary of the Senate has received a majority of electoral votes for one candidate. The Secretary notifies the Senate, which notifies the House, and a Joint Session is organized as soon as possible. Congress is called back immediately from recess if necessary. For the purposes of the counting, 538 remains the presumptive total number of votes and 270 the necessary majority. Much as now, Congress confirms the validity of the certificates and officially proclaims the winner.
The new president takes office as soon as possible after the count. Perhaps it’s the very same day. Perhaps for practicality it’s noon on the day following. Or whatever. But as soon as possible.
Congress counts the leftover electoral votes as they come in. The Secretary of the Senate continues the informal tally, and it’s probably most convenient to count them in Joint Session in a batch when they all finally arrive. The leftovers do need to be counted & affirmed by Congress. It’s not that they don’t matter; it’s just that they don’t matter to the outcome of the election.
The places where the most time is saved in this alternative are between State Certification & Electoral College meeting (2–3) and Electoral College meeting & Joint Session counting (3–5). In the current process, even if a State’s election is won in a landslide, there are no challenges, and State officials certify results on election night, the State has to sit on those results until the day appointed for electors to meet. Similarly, no matter when the States send their electoral votes to Washington, the Senate has to sit on those until the next Congress meets in January.
The gap between Joint Session counting & taking office (5–6) is also removed. You can still have a formal inauguration ceremony later on if you want; take your sweet time setting up a stage and bringing in guests. But as a practical matter, the powers of the presidency should transfer over as soon as Congress finalizes the count.
As the system stands now, we can unofficially “know” the winner of an election for weeks—months!—before they actually take office. We have seen how bad incentives predominate when a losing lame duck president remains in office too long. This must change.
There are still lots of problems with the outline above. It turns out that amending the Constitution is really hard! Here are a few of the problems that I’ve identified—
“As soon as possible” is used a lot in the steps above. The innocent view assumes that as soon as a State can move to the next step in the process they will do so. But a flexible timeline opens some opportunities for shenanigans even as it closes others. Say an EC majority for Party A comes down to a swing State whose legislature is controlled by Party B. You can imagine that State delaying: perhaps some of its electors refuse to come to the statehouse, preventing a quorum, so their EC vote can’t take place. Votes trickle in to Congress from around the country, dutifully tallied by the Secretary, but the Joint Session is never triggered because 270 is never reached. Deadlines will need to be set for some steps, ie. “as soon as possible but by Month Day at the latest.” The question then is where to put the deadlines.
What if no one gets 270? Our current process makes provision for special cases—if no candidate gets a majority or if there’s a tie. So making 270 the trigger for the Joint Session is problematic in both innocent & diabolical scenarios:
Innocent. Electoral votes are cast by all the States but the result is a lack of majority or tie. One solution to this is simple: make the trigger for Joint Session either the Secretary of the Senate receives EC votes totaling 270 for one candidate or the Secretary receives EC votes from all 50 States & the District. Or there could be an Absolute Final Deadline whereafter the JS is triggered, no matter the number of votes received.
Diabolical. This scenario is related to the problems of delay above. Say an EC tie–breaking vote for Party A comes down to a swing State controlled by Party B. Party B knows that a vote in the House will go its way. So the State delays sending its EC votes. 270 is not reached. Votes from all 50+D.C. are not received. The Absolute Final Deadline passes. Congress meets and resolves the tie for Party B. Not good. Solving the majority problem is easier than solving the tie problem. After the Absolute Final Deadline, the majority needed to win could be changed to a majority of the votes received by Congress by that time. If you don’t send ’em in, you don’t count toward the total. As to figuring out whether a tie is real or manufactured, and what to do about it, uhh, ¯|(ツ)/¯
A related problem: which Congress counts the electoral votes? If the States move fast enough (ie before January 3) it could be the outgoing Congress. If they don’t, it would be the new Congress. I don’t know if one is objectively better than the other, but the ways this could be gamed in close scenarios to get a more sympathetic Congress are worth some thought.
Some presidents will have longer terms than others. The difference could be days, or weeks, or I guess up to a month or two isn’t impossible. It all depends on how quickly challenges can be resolved in the States, and then on some logistics, like the speed of the mail. I can’t decide if this is actually a problem or not. (Do leap years make this true already, by a small amount?) I suppose that partisans could again delay to extend their president’s tenure as long as possible. Some solutions—
The outgoing president continues to serve as President ex officio with no powers for a certain period, say through a set Inauguration Day. Or put it the other way around, with the new president being President-elect-but-with-all-the-powers-and-privileges-of-the-presidency until Inauguration Day when they become President-president. This fixes the problem on paper, at least.
Give the outgoing president some (clearly defined and limited) powers! Make a Council of Former Presidents with an advisory role on appointments or something, or even a veto power over some categories of legislation. Most recent ex–president becomes chair of the Council with an extra vote.
Closer to the realm of reality: make the length of presidential terms a fixed number of days. At the end of the term, the election process begins as above. For the whole duration of the process, the powers of the presidency are held by a caretaker executive. The clock on the incoming president’s term starts when Congress certifies their win. This means that Election Day, rather than being fixed, would float slightly as years go on. (Who is the caretaker? Who knows— perhaps it’s a rotating or randomly selected State governor, or a small group of legislators, or—wait for it—the Council of Former Presidents!)
From “Stiffening, in the Master Founders’ Wills” by Charles Olson:
… we pick
a private way
among debris
of common
wealths—Public
fact as sure
as dimensions stay
personal. …
And from “Lying in Politics” in crises of the republic by Hannah Arendt:
The deliberate falsehood deals with contingent facts; that is with matters that carry no inherent truth within themselves, no necessity to be as they are. Factual truths are never compellingly true. […]
Facts need testimony to be remembered and trustworthy witnesses to be established in order to find a secure dwelling place in the domain of human affairs. From this, it follows that no factual statement can ever be beyond doubt—as secure and shielded against attack as, for instance, the statement that two and two make four.
Every day last summer I watched
For pears, and every day I found
Just one. If the weather was good,
I could see the grain of its flesh
And catch a whiff of its green smell.
As pears go, it was pitiful:
Bruised before it could leave the tree,
Ugly, not at all endearing.
But that tree tried so goddam hard
You have to respect it. Have to.
Did you produce a pear last year?
See, that’s what I thought. So what if
The fruit was small or fell early
Or was eaten clear through by worms.
It just shows that worms have good taste.
That tree will try again, and again,
For it has proudly made a pear:
Mangled, but a pear nonetheless.
As schools around the country at every level make plans for the strangest fall in a good while, it’s hard to balance expectations from the former times against the realities of today. Some folks are worried because school won’t look anything like it has in the past. Kids staying put in one room the whole day! Not eating in the cafeteria! The desks so far apart! And so on. Often an old guard out of school for some time and far from decision making, they fret that what schools propose, the hybrid and adapted models, simply won’t work. It’s not what school is, because it’s not what school was for them. School has got to be face-to-face this fall. Not because it’s safe, but because that’s the way it is. This nostalgic concern cannot be allowed to hinder a well–planned return to school.
It’s not like it used to be is a perfectly natural reaction to, like, everything right now. I say it’s an old guard fretting, but all us veterans of the before times have had the feeling. We’re all grasping for anchors to hold us to life in a previous world. But we must be careful. It’s not like it used to be often precedes so why bother. It stifles a solutions–oriented conversation that we desperately need to have. It quashes the kind of creative thinking thinking necessary to make the start of school as small a disaster as possible.
We have to put aside all memories of school as it was. We must imagine school without cafeterias, without passing time. We must imagine making older students caretakers of the younger, providing daycare for parents who have to go back to work. We must escape the confines of brick-and-mortar buildings and imagine classes in tents on the lawn. We must imagine remote learning. Not because any of these things are the solution, alone or together, in a given place. Not because they are ideal. But because—however little they resemble school as we knew it before—they are possible.
There is a legitimate kind of practical concern: do we have the space, the personnel, the budget, to make our plans work. Practical concerns abound, but they can be solved for. To say that the situation is far from ideal, while true, is not solvable. Not one administrator I’ve heard of is *ahem* remotely happy to be doing remote learning this fall. No one on any side of the system is looking forward to week-on-week-off hybrid formats. Schools are planning for these possibilities because they have to: it’s their task to solve the problem. Unideal solutions are our best chance to keep students, faculty, staff, and every person in every freaking community in these United States safe.
We need to act boldly, and right now. We need to think openly about what is possible in the future, free from the stubborn limits of what things were like before. Because the future, for schools, is coming up fast.
“I just do the work that is in front of me,” says Jessa Crispin (via Austin Kleon). “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives,” says Annie Dillard (via Maria Popova).
Do the work that’s in font of you; spend your days as you would spend your life. As a person, I want so badly to live up to these words. As a musician, I know I have to. The music demands it. To do good work bit by daily bit, and then build up the work of days into progress over time, is the definition of practice. Without practice no skill can save you. I believe this. I know this. And still. Still I find it so hard. After months of basically not practicing organ at all, I’m trying to get back to basics. I’m trying to get some work done at the keyboard. I’m trying to practice again.
Practicing music is one of those habits, like exercise, that’s easier to fall out of than it is to get into. Would that it were the other way around, like nail–biting or doomscrolling. As it is, it’s one of those things that’s dastardly easy to manage not to do. It’s not that I’m doing anything instead of practicing: I have plenty of spare time in my summer days. And it’s not at all inconvenient: I have a piano upstairs and a digital keyboard downstairs and an organ at church, just a two-minute bike ride away, that I can play any time of night or day. I have the time and the means. But I’m out of the habit.
Practicing is also… not entirely pleasant? My teacher sometimes calls practice “doing the dirty laundry.” Boring, perhaps, but necessary—don’t do it and you’ll stink. Again, I believe this. I know this. And still. It’s not exactly an encouraging start to know how much of a slog a practice session will be. Organ practice means getting all the fingers and both feet to do the right thing at exactly the right time, all together. This means going v e r y, v e r y slowly and repeating the movements over and over and over and over again until they come naturally from kinetic memory. Maybe some folks find the repetition meditative or relaxing or something. I never have. Some must find joy in it. Lately, I haven’t, as much as I’d like to.
Part of the problem is that I have all this music from the spring semester that I can play so well! Some of these pieces I’ve been working on since last fall or longer, perfecting and tweaking, to get up to performance level. But I can’t keep on repeating the same old stuff. I do want to learn new pieces, which means doing the often unpleasant work.
Everything is new and hard. I’ve been away a long time. But I’m trying.
I don’t like to set no–fail goals, but any kind of playing time is critically important right now. So I’ve put one absolutely essential, necessary, no-failure-allowed item on my calendar. Be on the bench practicing for an hour, at least, every day. No exceptions. This is the only way I know to build back up the habit of regular practice.
Hopefully, I can start to do the work in front of me again, to order my days more as I’d like them to be. It’s rough going here at the start. I’m occasionally still failing to get my no–fail hour in—okay, more than occasionally. And the hours I get are never the most productive they could be. Day by day, though, I’m making progress. Learning. And I’m feeling, faintly, the joy that’s possible in the slow regard and perfect execution of little things. I’m hoping that joy will grow; only time will tell.