With President Bush biding his time until he vacates the White House and President-elect Obama yet to take the oath on Jan. 20, the jeer around Washington is that the United States effectively "has no president." However, this frustrating bottleneck is seeding serious talk about amending the U.S. Constitution to move inauguration day to a time closer to the Nov. 4 presidential election.
For 144 years after the 1789 inauguration of George Washington as first president, inauguration day was March 4, four months after Election Day. (Washington didn't take the oath, however, until April 30.)
The gap was designed to accommodate the sluggish ways of those times—time for the new president to get his affairs in order and to take the tedious journey by carriage or horse to Washington.
But the Constitution was amended in 1933 to change the date to Jan. 20, taking effect four years later in 1937 with the second inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt. The change was prompted by the crisis of the Depression, and the public demand for action by a new presidency.
Now with the nation in the grips of a grave economic crises, with a newly elected president with new ideas stuck on the sidelines and an anxious public eager for a changing of the Oval Office guard as in the 1930s, amending the Constitution again to accommodate a 21st-century culture will be a major topic during the Obama administration.
Impetus for the change should not be geared to accelerating the departure of an unpopular president such as George W. Bush. The change should be for obvious practical reasons. Voters make their choice in November and the winner needs no appreciable time to take the oath.
The modern presidency takes shape months before the election when candidates assemble a circle of advisers to develop policies to present to voters. By Election Day, the winner is ready to assume office.
Enduring a lame duck president for two months can lead to mischief: President Bush is spending his days imposing new regulations as payoffs to political donors, only to see those new rules reversed and abolished by President Obama after he takes office.
The beneficiaries of an earlier inauguration would not be Democrats or Republicans, but the American public that would have endorsed the continued service of a popular incumbent or vote for the rapid installation of a new commander-in-chief to improve the nation's government policies.
Moving the date up two months in 1933 was an improvement and an even earlier date would be more beneficial.
