Ronald Reagan Started this Tradition, and For decades, departing presidents have left note for successor. Here’s a look at them.

 

BY BAILEY ALDRIDGE

JANUARY 19, 2021 01:45 PM,

UPDATED JANUARY 19, 2021 04:05 PM

Since at least 1989, new US presidents have been greeted in the Oval Office by a letter from their predecessor.

The tradition started with former President Ronald Reagan, according to The Associated Press. As he was preparing to leave office on then incoming President George H.W. Bush’s Inauguration Day, he wrote his successor a message on a notepad that included a cartoon of turkeys climbing an elephant — the symbol of the Republican party — and the letterhead “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

“Dear George, you’ll have moments when you’ll want to use this particular stationery,” Reagan wrote on the notepad. “Well, go for it.”

He went on to say he treasured the memories they had together and that he would be praying for him during his time in office.

“I’ll miss our Thursday lunches. Ron,” he concluded.

Since then, every outgoing president has carried on the tradition — leaving words of encouragement, advice and congratulations for their successors to find on their Inauguration Day.

It’s unclear, however, if President Donald Trump will partake in the tradition when he leaves office on President-elect Joe Biden’s Wednesday inauguration. Trump has shirked other presidential traditions and norms — including a concession speech and attending his successor’s inauguration — but has not indicated he will forgo this one.

As Biden’s inauguration nears, here’s a look at the letters other former presidents have left their successors:

Bottom of Form

OBAMA TO TRUMP

Before he left office on Jan. 20 2017, former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, slipped a handwritten note into the top drawer of the Resolute Desk.

Obama didn’t tell even his closest aides what he wrote to Trump in the message. But CNN later obtained the letter from one of the White House visitors Trump showed it to.

The 44th president opened the letter by congratulating Trump on “a remarkable run” and went on to offer reflections and lessons he learned from his eight years as president, telling Trump “American leadership in this world really is indispensable.”

“It’s up to us, through action and example, to sustain the international order that’s expanded steadily since the end of the Cold War, and upon which our own wealth and safety depend,” he warned.

He also reminded the new president that “we are just temporary occupants of this office.”

“That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions — like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties — that our forebears fought and bled for,” he wrote, according to CNN. “Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.”

Obama’s note came after Trump repeatedly lodged untrue and personal attacks against him during and prior to his run against Democrat Hillary Clinton.

But Obama closed by wishing Trump and his wife Melania “the very best.”

“Know that we stand ready to help in any ways which we can,” he wrote. “Good luck and Godspeed.”

BUSH TO OBAMA

On Jan. 20, 2009, former President George W. Bush, a Republican, scrawled a note on White House stationery on the last day of his eight years in office.

Bush’s letter, obtained by ABC News, also opened by offering his congratulations to his successor.

“You have just begun a fantastic chapter in your life,” he wrote. “Very few have had the honor of knowing the responsibility you now feel. Very few know the excitement of the moment and the challenges you will face.”

He then warned Obama of “trying moments.”

“The critics will rage. Your ‘friends’ will disappoint you,” he wrote. “But, you will have an Almighty God to comfort you, a family who loves you and a country that is pulling for you, including me.”

The 107-word letter concluded with “God bless you. Sincerely, GW.”

CLINTON TO BUSH

Former President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, described the thrills of the presidency in the letter he left to Bush on his way out of office on Jan. 20, 2001.

“You lead a proud, decent, good people,” the 42nd president wrote in the letter obtained by The New York Times. “And from this day you are President of all of us. I salute you and wish you success and much happiness.”

He then called the burdens of the presidency “great but often exaggerated.”

“The sheer joy of doing what you believe is right is inexpressible,” the letter read. “My prayers are with you and your family. Godspeed.”

BUSH TO CLINTON

Former President George H.W. Bush followed in Reagan’s footsteps and left a note for Clinton, who he lost his bid for reelection, on Clinton’s 1993 Inauguration Day.

The note, which has been held up as an example of grace in defeat, gained attention on social media in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election as Trump refused to concede and sought to overturn the results.

Hillary Clinton posted a photo of the letter on her Instagram in 2016, recalling that it moved her to tears when she and her husband found it in the Oval Office on their first day in the White House.

The note wished Clinton “great happiness here.”

“You will be our President when you read this note,” the 41st president wrote. “I wish you well. I wish your family well. Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.”

Bush Sr. and Clinton shared a friendship in the years after the former left office. Upon Bush’s death in 2018, Clinton recalled “I just loved him,” the AP reports.