Getting ready to lead the country on 'day one'

I have some good news for the citizenry as the presidential campaign swiftly winds its way this week through the cheesy dells of Wisconsin, towards the blue-collar havens of Ohio and the cantaloupe fields of the Texas Rio Grande in early March.

Hillary Clinton repeatedly reassures us that somehow being the senator from New York in this decade and having managed Bill Clinton as first lady for several years in the ’90s makes her “ready from Day One” to lead the mighty ship of state as president. In fact, if you look back on all the rhetoric that she and the other guys have muttered in recent months, the one phrase that seems to stand out among all others after no less than 8,370 uses is Hillary telling each of us she’s “ready to lead on day one.”

Well, here’s the good news: Nothing ever happens on day one and certainly nothing that requires actual leadership.

If you briefly review the history of presidential day ones, the happy fact is that simply not much ever happens. Of course, there’s the inauguration itself on Jan. 20, day one, and the inaugural parade and those majestic aerial TV pictures scanning the Washington mall for crowd shots. But other than that, not much really happens. At least nothing to be worried about.

In fact, the last time anyone can really remember anything of note happening on a day one was back on Jan. 20, 1981 — the first day of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. That’s the day those idiot captors over in Iran decided to let the American hostages go and that only happened on that particular day one for two basic reasons:

1) It was a dirty trick to try to embarrass outgoing President Jimmy Carter, who obviously had little luck getting them freed while in office; 2) and the hostage crisis was the start of what was to evolve into ABC News’ “Nightline” program with Ted Koppel, and after a few months of noting on the show every single night exactly how many days the hostages had been held captive, even the captors got sick to death of being reminded and the only remedy was to let them all go free.

The rest is history, except that “Nightline” continues all these years later (but, sadly, without Ted).

So this lack of momentous events on Jan. 20 seems to suggest it’s not absolutely vital that a new president be “ready to lead on day one.” (In fact, some may say the current president who shall remain nameless has proven that point to an extreme.)

Yet while we can be reasonably certain the odds of anything really big happening on day one are rather small, that’s probably not the best news the Clinton campaign has heard this month.

They’re counting on the electorate thinking to themselves, “Just what on Earth will happen if the world explodes on day one? Will we have Hillary sitting in the Oval Office, where she has always really belonged, calling the shots like Patton and leading whatever there is to lead?”

I suppose both John McCain and Barack Obama could also lead on day one, if necessary, especially considering McCain’s experience in Washington and the military and Obama’s having fought and defeated the Clinton machine in the primaries to win the presidency to begin with, should it come to that. Also (and this is nearly always a good thing), we must remember that any sitting president has an endless supply of experts, tacticians, analysts and senior aides to consult, starting on day one, about anything that might rear its ugly head — from the unemployment rate to nuclear weapons.

So dealing with day one is quite manageable; the real question is will he or she be prepared to lead on day two and those 1,458 days remaining in a typical four-year term in the White House?

John Merli has been a Prince William County resident since 1984, and a Potomac News columnist since 1985. He has worked in the media for more than 30 years. E-mail him
at j.merli@comcast.net.