US no longer needs a physical political capital

US presidential candidates are fond of talking about what they’ll do “on day one” if elected. Donald Trump is no exception.

Yet they routinely omit to speak – and apparently forget to think – of how they might use the almost limitless discretion that a president enjoys about how he does the one thing that he must do on the first day of his administration, namely to take the oath of office. In this, too, Trump is no exception.

President is free to choose where he’s inaugurated, where he works

Neither the US Constitution nor any federal statute requires a president to take his oath of office in the District of Columbia, much less at the western entrance to the Capitol building. No provision of the constitution or of any federal statute – including the statutory provisions codified at 36 US Code chapter 5, titled “Presidential inauguration ceremonies” – requires that there be either an inaugural address or an inaugural parade or an inaugural ball, much less that any such address or parade or ball take place in the District of Columbia. These are all mere traditions.

Past presidents repeatedly have taken the oath of office elsewhere than in Washington, DC. The first two US presidents, George Washington and John Adams, took the oath of office in New York or Philadelphia. On November 22, 1963, Vice President Lyndon Johnson took the presidential oath of office in an airplane taking him and former president Kennedy’s widow and still-warm corpse from Dallas, Texas, to Washington, DC.

Vice-presidents who have become president due to the death in office of elected presidents have invariably dispensed with inaugural parades or balls; their inaugural ceremonies have been the funeral ceremonies of their predecessors.

Furthermore,