Other presidents were able to rise above differences

Fifty-two years ago this week, his term in the White House drawing to a sad close, President Lyndon B. Johnson gathered members of his Cabinet together and delivered a strong message.

“We are now approaching the last month of this administration,” he told them. “It is neither desirable nor equitable to bind the hands of the next administration in major program areas unless there is overriding necessity to do so. We should not needlessly foreclose the options of the new administration to initiate their own program changes. It would be particularly unfair to take actions now which must be implemented over a long period of time.”

Johnson, a Democrat, and his successor, Richard M. Nixon, a

Republican, were ferocious partisan pugilists. They disliked each other and reviled each other’s motives and actions. Indeed, they had spent their lives in opposition to each other. Their enmity was as great as that of President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. And yet the transition transpired with hardly a hiccup.

The presidential transition is an American political tradition. It’s a tradition that began in 1801, when John Adams gave way to his rival, Thomas Jefferson. Over the years there were bumps on the transition road, but no swerves off that road, until now.

In 1933, President Herbert Hoover tried to enlist his successor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his efforts to fight the Great Depression,

but the New York governor did not want to be pulled into the Hoover universe and did not want to be tied by his predecessor’s policies. The two met in the White House the day before the inauguration, and Hoover asked his successor to support him in closing the nation’s banks. “Like hell I will!” Roosevelt replied, adding, “If you haven’t the guts to do it yourself, I’ll wait until I’m president to do it.” The 31st president didn’t, and the 32nd did.

In 1953, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower swung by the White House but did not join Harry Truman for coffee on Inauguration Day. Instead, he waited in the car for the president to join him for the ride to the Capitol. Eisenhower said he wondered “if I can stand sitting next to that guy.”

Even so, the transition in both cases was basically smooth.

For all the years-long tension between Nixon and Johnson , the transition between the two men was, in comparison to the 2020 spectacle, the very model of the peaceful transfer of power.

It began even before the election. Johnson appointed Charles Murphy — a onetime Truman speechwriter and veteran of previous transitions — as his transition officer.

In a Pittsburgh meeting with Billy Graham before the election, Nixon told the evangelist to convey a message to the president that while the Republican ticket might criticize administration policies, there would be no personal criticism of Johnson himself and, moreover, that if Nixon were elected, he wanted a warm relationship with his predecessor. Shortly thereafter, Murphy told the president that the Republican team had been informed “that while we’re not going to help Nixon get elected, if he should be elected, we will do our best to help him get off to a good start.”

Two men of different parties, different outlooks and different personalities made the transition work.

Now we watch as a presidential transition that might have been conducted at an awkward social distance unfurls in even more awkward circumstances. Biden might feel as Ulysses Grant did in 1869; he refused to sit beside his predecessor, the impeached Andrew Johnson. Trump might feel like the first President Johnson, who didn’t attend his successor’s inauguration. That was before television images raced across the country. A divided nation requires a moment of national unity to warm the chill of a January transfer of power.