Poor Losers Club

Pictured are three presidents who skipped their successor’s inaugurations.

Bad loser Donald Trump is not likely to attend the inauguration of Joe Biden. He would not the first president to refuse to attend his successor’s inauguration. In the past, three outgoing presidents — John Adams in 1801, John Quincy Adams in 1829 and Andrew Johnson in 1869 chose not to attend their successor’s inaugurations.

In the instance of John Adams a re-election a tie between Jefferson and running mate Aaron Burr, which meant that the election decision next moved to the House of Representatives. After more than 30 ballots, the House of Representatives finally decided the race for Jefferson. For reasons that he never made public, he chose to skip Jefferson’s inauguration, leaving on the early morning stagecoach out of Washington that morning to begin the journey back to his beloved Quincy, Massachusetts.

John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, faced multiple challengers, notably from Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay. Jackson won the most popular and electoral votes, but he failed to obtain a majority of needed electoral votes. With the election at stake, the Clay electors switched their support to Adams, and the House of Representatives voted to make Adams the next president. Later, Jackson declared a “corrupt bargain” had taken place and vowed to run again in 1828. The election of 1828 featured a contentious rematch between the two men. Adams’ supporters accused Jackson of being a military tyrant and a bigamist. Rachel Donelson Jackson’s divorce to Lewis Robards in 1793 had not been granted, which technically made her an adultress. She was granted a divorce the following year, but Adams’ camp claimed Andrew Jackson was morally unfit to serve as president.

Vice President Andrew Johnson succeeded to the presidency after the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln in 1865. In turn, the new president committed himself to obstructing the will of the Republican Congress at every step. In November 1868, the nation elected Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Johnson’s nemesis, to the presidency by a wide electoral margin. In the popular vote, Grant owed his slim majority of 300,000 to the votes of nearly a half million freedmen in Southern states.

Donald Trump will probably be in Mar-a-Lago on January 20 surrounded by his family and friends. And the world will move on wondering how Americans could have fallen for a circus barker.