Former presidents don’t criticize their successors in public.
Or do they?
Former Presidents Invoice Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden have all criticized President Donald Trump in current months.
In April 2025, Obama, for instance, spoke in regards to the significance of preserving the worldwide order, which means the system of guidelines, norms and establishments which were energetic since World Struggle II. He stated: “And this is an important moment, because in the last two months, we have seen a U.S. government actively try to destroy that order and discredit it. And the thinking, I gather, is that somehow, since we are the strongest, we’re going to be better off if we can just bully people into doing whatever we want.”
Biden additionally provided his personal adverse feedback on April 15: “In fewer than 100 days, this new administration has done so much damage,” he stated in his first public remarks since leaving workplace.
Some commentators have referred to as these former presidents’ remarks “unprecedented.”
Many People are accustomed to former presidents not talking about – not to mention criticizing – the present president.
As a scholar of the presidency, I do know that the majority presidents keep quiet about their successors, no matter what the present president does or says. They do that to keep away from undermining each their very own reputations in addition to the soundness of the presidency itself.
However I’m additionally struck by the truth that this custom just isn’t as entrenched as former presidents would possibly declare or as many People imagine.
President Jimmy Carter and his Republican challenger, Ronald Reagan, shake palms as they meet on a debate stage in 1980.
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Presidents who bucked the norm
President George Washington established the precedent that presidents retire after two phrases and keep away from public assertion. John Quincy Adams, the sixth U.S. president, established a unique mannequin.
After Adams misplaced his bid for reelection in 1828 to Andrew Jackson, he served within the Home of Representatives from 1831 by means of 1848. Congress is an uncommon perch for a former president, however it’s a spot the place criticizing sitting presidents and their insurance policies is a part of the job. Adams had loads of criticism there for his successors, together with Jackson and James Okay. Polk.
Practically half a century later, President Teddy Roosevelt was dissatisfied that his hand-picked successor, William Howard Taft, did not dwell as much as Roosevelt’s imaginative and prescient of reform. Roosevelt went from criticizing Taft privately in political circles to campaigning in opposition to him publicly in 1912, aiming to win a nonconsecutive second time period. Democrat Woodrow Wilson finally gained that election, beating out Taft and Roosevelt.
Richard Nixon, who, in 1974, turned the one president to resign from workplace, wrote a sequence of books within the Eighties and Nineties that sought to redeem his personal sullied picture by casting himself as a visionary statesman. Nixon’s books additionally included loads of unsolicited recommendation – and implicit criticism – for Democratic and Republican presidents alike.
Earlier than changing into the beloved elder statesman of the previous presidents membership in 1980, Jimmy Carter earned the ire of his successors for his outspokenness. He stated that President Ronald Reagan’s administration was an “aberration on the political scene” and stated that one in every of Clinton’s political pardons was “disgraceful.”
Excluding Roosevelt, these former presidents who criticized their successors all felt they’d one thing to show. Anxious to redeem their legacies, they didn’t retire quietly.
A wholesome foray into retirement
So why don’t everyone knows these tales, and as an alternative imagine that previous presidents merely maintain their mouths shut?
People have lengthy handled presidential retirement as an emblem of a wholesome democracy. And that story of retirement emphasizes how former presidents typically depart politics behind them.
The trajectory of presidents discovering peace and contentment in retirement, surrounded by family and friends, is an interesting approach for presidential biographers to finish a narrative. These tales have included narratives about Harry Truman taking a cross-country highway journey solely months after leaving the White Home in 1953, and George W. Bush taking on portray.
In actuality, former presidents have led advanced lives of happiness and loss, withdrawal and engagement. The vitality and ambition that introduced them to the White Home typically make retirement tough. And, over the lengthy historical past of the presidency, former presidents have turn into more and more public figures.
Former Presidents Invoice Clinton, left, George W. Bush and Barack Obama are seen with Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush on the inauguration of Donald Trump on Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington.
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A shifting function
One other necessary issue within the rising prominence of former presidents is how their roles have not too long ago modified.
Starting within the Nineties, former presidents and first women tried to publicly present friendship and settlement with their counterparts.
George H.W. Bush and Clinton, for instance, teamed as much as increase cash for catastrophe reduction after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in South and Southeast Asia. In 2017, Bush’s son George W. Bush, himself a former president by that point, referred to as Clinton his “brother with a different mother.”
Former first girl Michelle Obama and Barack Obama have publicly thanked George W. Bush and Laura Bush for serving to their household regulate to life within the White Home. Michelle Obama has additionally turn into identified for her private friendship with George W. Bush.
And as medical advances enabled former presidents to dwell longer than ever, the relationships inside a rising former presidents membership turned the topic of books, motion pictures and tv segments.
All of those tales had the identical message – that each one presidents are dedicated to their nation. Likewise, the amiable relationship between former and sitting presidents exhibits that if social gathering leaders may overcome partisanship within the identify of unity and friendship, so too may different People.
In a outstanding second, for instance, three presidents from two totally different events – Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama – got here collectively for a video earlier than Biden’s 2021 inauguration to name for unity in a second of disaster.
“America’s a generous country, people of great hearts. All three of us were lucky to be the president of this country,” Bush continued.
The Republican former president regarded on the Democrats on both facet of him and smiled.
Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Invoice Clinton communicate collectively in 2021.
A brand new form of presidential relations
Whereas friendships between presidents turned extra frequent within the Nineties and 2000s, Clinton and particularly Trump have been doing one thing totally different by the 2016 election.
In 2016, Clinton turned an energetic partisan in assist of his spouse, Hillary Clinton, throughout her unsuccessful bid for president.
Each Clintons remained public critics of Trump lengthy after he assumed workplace in 2017.
For his half, Trump as a politician after which president instantly dismissed the notion of friendship together with his predecessors and former opponents. He was fast to sentence Hillary Clinton – and particularly Obama – within the early years of his first presidency.
No sooner did Trump lose the 2020 election than he was heaping public scorn on Biden with an vitality that solely elevated after Trump entered the 2024 race.
Trump’s criticism of Biden didn’t cease after his 2024 victory, with the White Home issuing statements like a pledge “to turn back the economic plague unleashed by the Biden Administration.”
Trump has escalated assaults on different presidents. However he was not the primary to criticize his successors or predecessors.
