If he follows this, he will only become the fourth president to regularly boycott the inauguration of his successor and the first in more than 150 years to do so.
Two other presidents missed their successors’ regular swearing-in, Martin Van Buren and Woodrow Wilson. The reason for Van Buren’s absence is unknown, but by historians it is not considered malicious, while Wilson was for health reasons.
CNN reached out to several presidential historians to provide context to this unusual event.
- John Adams did not attend the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1801.
- John Quincy Adams did not attend Andrew Jackson’s inauguration in 1829.
- Andrew Johnson did not attend the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant in 1869.
Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center of the University of Virginia, told CNN the refusal to attend the inauguration of a successor was an “unfortunate precedent set by Adams, and not copied again. is until his son did so in 1829. ”
According to John Quincy Adams and Andrew Johnson, the political landscape, according to Elaine Kamarck, senior fellow in the Governance Studies program at the Brookings Institution, was defined by an “unusual amount of enmity” between the parties.
It is known that other outgoing presidents miss their inaugurations in part or all of their successors.
Van Buren did not attend William Henry Harrison’s inauguration in 184. Balcerski told CNN that Van Buren was driving in a separate wagon behind Harrison to the Capitol, and historians do not know why Van Buren skipped the event. Richard Mentor Johnson, the vice president of Van Buren, did attend.
In 1921, outgoing President Wilson, who had suffered a stroke, rode with his successor, Warren G. Harding, but did not stay for the occasion.
Andrew Phillips, the curator and director of museum operations at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, told CNN that Wilson told his successor that he would not attend because the stairs to the platform were too steep for him. “He made a joke about it and said, ‘The Senate used to overthrow me, and now I do not want to fall down myself,'” Phillips told CNN, referring to the Senate’s defeat of the League of Nations Plan. and the Treaty of Versailles.
Phillips added that the Washington Herald reported at the time that “for the first time in a century, the outgoing president did not witness the installation of the incoming administration.”
After Nixon resigned, he left Washington about an hour before Ford took the oath of office in the White House.
Perry told CNN that although Nixon was not present at the swearing-in ceremony, Ford’s farewell to him “symbolizes a peaceful transfer of power, even under the most dire of circumstances,” illustrates the resignation of a president.