Trump should accept nomination at White House

With the Republican convention all but canceled because of the covid-19 pandemic, President Donald Trump has been toying with the idea of formally accepting his party’s nomination from the White House – a prospect that has brought howls of outrage from Democrats.

“It’s very wrong,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. “For the president of the United States to degrade once again the White House as he has done over and over again by saying he’s going to completely politicize it, is something that should be rejected right out of hand . . . . It won’t happen, let’s put it that way.”

But Trump would not be the first president to use the White House – or even the Oval Office – as the backdrop for a signature campaign event.

In December 1979, Jimmy Carter declared that he was running for reelection in a somber nine-minute ceremony in the East Room. “As president and as a candidate, I will continue to ask you to join me in looking squarely at the truth,” he said. “Only by facing up to the world as it is can we lift ourselves towards a better future.”

Carter’s campaign even made ads from the Oval Office. In the fall of 1980, during an intense race against former California governor Ronald Reagan, Carter’s campaign broadcast a four-minute spot that showed him in a darkened presidential office. A beam of overhead light angled onto Carter’s face as he warned about the dangers of nuclear war. “In this office, I’ve worked in the arms-control tradition of seven presidents, Democrat and Republican,” he said. “Before you vote, please look carefully into this deep chasm that divides Governor Reagan and myself on this issue.”

A little more than four years later, Reagan himself used the Oval Office as the backdrop for his reelection announcement on Jan. 29, 1984. Seated behind the Resolute Desk, Reagan said that “our work is not finished.”

“This historic room and the presidency belong to you. It is your right and responsibility every four years to give someone temporary custody of this office and of the institution of the presidency. You so honored me, and I’m grateful – grateful and proud of what, together, we have accomplished,” Reagan said. “We have made a new beginning.”