The precarious state of relations with the nations at war in Europe, particularly Germany, made Wilson fear for national security in the event of an interregnum  which then, before the ratification of the 20th Amendment in 1933, lasted more than a month longer than it does today. A former professor of political science who had studied and admired parliamentary systems, Wilson decided upon a drastic plan to shorten this uneasy period.

Image Credit... Luba Lukova

Two days before the election he had a sealed letter, which he had typed himself, hand-delivered to the secretary of state, who was then third in line of succession to the presidency. Wilson wrote that if he lost he would immediately appoint his Republican opponent, Charles Evans Hughes, secretary of state, and then he and his vice president would resign, making Hughes president at once. Wilson said he was proposing this plan because those were not “ordinary times” and “no such critical circumstances in regard to our foreign policy have ever existed before.”

But Wilson won California, by just 3,806 votes, and he stayed in office to lead the United States into World War I and make peace afterward. His plan for a shortened interregnum never saw the light of day.

The only other people who even knew what he’d proposed were his wife and the secretary of state, Robert Lansing, who first revealed it in his posthumously published memoirs in 1935. The revelation came too late to save the country from what has been called “the interregnum of despair” between Franklin Roosevelt’s election in November 1932 and Herbert Hoover’s departure from office on March 4, 1933. Hoover had served under Wilson and admired him, and he might have adopted this plan if he had known about it.

Our current interregnum and its predecessor in 1933 have not been the only peril-filled transfers of power in our history  1861 was the scariest of them all  and there ought to be a way to avoid or at least shorten such anxious passages. It is worth asking whether Woodrow Wilson’s idea could be wisely applied now.