WASHINGTON (AP) – It’s a club Donald Trump was never really interested in joining, and certainly not so soon: the cadre of former commanders-in-chief who venerated the presidency enough to put aside political differences often bitter and even to unite for a common cause.
Members of the club of former presidents pose together to take pictures. They smile and caress their backs as they surround themselves with historical events or sit smiling side by side at VIP funerals. They take on special projects together. They are rarely criticized and tend to offer even less harsh words about their successors in the White House.
However, like so many other presidential traditions, Trump seems to be deprived of that. Now that he has left office, it’s hard to see him embracing the lordship and exclusive club of living ex-presidents.
“He laughed at the idea that he would be accepted into the presidents ‘club,” said Kate Andersen Brower, who interviewed Trump in 2019 for her book “Team of Five: The Presidents’ Club in the Trump Era.” “He said to me, ‘I don’t think they’ll accept me.'”
It’s equally clear that the other members of the club don’t want him much, at least for now.
Former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton recorded a three-minute video from Arlington National Cemetery following this week’s inauguration of President Joe Biden, praising the peaceful presidential succession as the core of American democracy. The segment did not include any mention of Trump by name, but it was a harsh rebuke to his behavior since he lost the November election.
“I think the fact that all three of us are here, talking about a peaceful transfer of power, speaks to the institutional integrity of our country,” Bush said. Obama called the inaugurations “a reminder that we can have fierce disagreements and yet recognize the common humanity of others, and that, as Americans, we have more in common than what separates us.”
Trump spent months making baseless claims that his election had been stolen for fraud and that he finally helped incite a deadly insurgency. at the US Capitol. He left the White House without attending the oath of Biden, the first president to skip his successor’s inauguration. in 152 years.
Obama, Bush and Clinton recorded their video after accompanying Biden to lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown soldier after the inauguration. They also recorded a video urging Americans to get vaccinated against coronavirus. Only Jimmy Carter, 96, who has limited his public events due to the pandemic, and Trump, who had already flown into post-presidential life in Florida, were not there.
Jeffrey Engel, founding director of the Presidential History Center at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said Trump is not a good choice for the former president’s club “because it’s a different temperament.”
“Historically, the presence of club members has respected the people of the club. Even Richard Nixon was respected by Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, etc., for his foreign policy,” Engel said. to see a lot of people calling on Trump for his strategic advice. “
Sometimes ex-presidents are called upon to do great work.
George HW Bush and Clinton teamed up in 2005 to launch a campaign urging Americans to help the victims of the devastating Southeast Asian tsunami. When Hurricane Katrina erupted off the Gulf Coast, Bush, the father of current President George W. Bush, called on Clinton to step up relief efforts to raise funds for Katrina.
When old Bush died in 2018, Clinton wrote, “Their friendship has been one of the great gifts of my life,” a big compliment considering that this was the man he kicked out of the White House after of a contested 1992 campaign, making Bush the only president in the last three decades except Trump.
Obama took advantage of Clinton and young President Bush to boost fundraising efforts for Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. George W. Bush also became good friends with former First Lady Michelle Obama, and the cameras on they caught him coughing as they sat together at the funeral of Arizona Senator John McCain.
Presidents typically exercise the same respect for their predecessors as they remain in office, regardless of party. In 1971, three years before he resigned dishonorably, Richard Nixon went to Texas to participate in the dedication of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library. When the Nixon Library was completed in 1990, then-President George HW Bush attended with former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
Trump’s break with tradition began even before his presidency began. After winning the election in November 2016, Obama welcomed Trump into the White House promising to “do everything possible to help you succeed.” Trump responded, “I hope to be with you many, many more times in the future,” but that never happened.
Instead, Trump falsely accused Obama of having overheard him and spent four years saving his predecessor’s record.
Current and former presidents sometimes hated each other and it is not unheard of to criticize their successors. Carter criticized the policies of Republican administrations that followed his own, Obama deceived Trump while campaigning for Biden and also criticized the policies of George W. Bush, although Obama used to be careful not to name his predecessor. Theodore Roosevelt tried to oust his successor, fellow Republican William Howard Taft, by founding his own “Bull Moose” party and running again against the presidency.
Still, presidential reverence for former presidents goes back even further. The nation’s second president, John Adams, was concerned enough to tarnish his predecessor’s legacy to keep George Washington’s cabinet appointments.
Trump may have time to build his relationship with his predecessors. He told Brower that “he could be seen becoming friends with Bill Clinton again,” and noted that the couple used to play golf together.
But the odds of becoming the traditional retirement president he never was while in office are long.
“I think Trump has taken it too far,” Brower said. “I don’t think these former presidents will receive him at any time.”