What is a Lame Duck?

The idea of a lame duck is not the best possible translation for the original concept of ‘lame duck’ (pato lamentable or vergonzoso would be more literal), but it is the one that was coined in Spanish for the phenomenon. A ‘lame duck’ refers to US presidents who are either at the end of their second term or have lost re-election and are in a period of political transition where they have already lost all relevance. Obama described himself as such in January 2017, as he jokingly said that it was clear to him that he was a lame duck, as no one listened to him when he gave orders. In those months when his departure is already dated and he cannot make big decisions, his role is relegated to little more than a passenger awaiting the arrival of the departure train.

However, in recent years we have seen how presidents like Obama and Trump, in their ‘lame duck’ moment, have taken the opportunity to exercise what little power they had left. Obama, less than a month after the transition of power to the Trump administration, voted to abstain in the UN Security Council on a resolution condemning Israel for building settler settlements in occupied Palestine. This was the first time the full Security Council had condemned Israel for flouting international law. This happened because Obama was in a position of strength, as he was not running for political office and could not be penalised by donors or voters.

The case of Trump is quite different, since, as most remember, the current president sought by all means to reverse the election results that showed him as the loser. He moved heaven, earth and subsoil to delegitimise his opponent through false accusations of electoral fraud. This whole process, which is entirely unbecoming of a democratic candidate and party, culminated in the storming of the Capitol on 6 January 2021, in order to stop the certification of the election result by the legislative chambers. This attempted coup d'état claimed 5 lives, hundreds of wounded and a picture of democratic weakness broadcast live around the world.

This phenomenon is not unique to the United States, as we recently learned that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that the upcoming municipal elections at the end of March in Turkey will be the last in which he will participate. The newly re-elected leader has been in power for more than 20 years (first as prime minister and later as president) and has been the most important Turkish leader since Kemal Atatürk. He has undoubtedly changed Turkey for decades to come. Among his merits is the normalisation of Islamist rule in one of the most secular countries in the world. He also changed the political regime from a parliamentary to a presidential system, resisted a military coup d'état (an actor historically accustomed to intervening in politics), abandoned Europeanist pretensions in the face of open authoritarianism and a conservative drift with neo-Ottomanist overtones of military interventions in Syria and Libya, and supported other Turkic peoples such as Azerbaijan in its conflict with Armenia. Currently, unless he resigns, he faces a five-year presidency in which he will probably appoint a successor and leave everything well in place for the continuity of his measures.

In conclusion, the ‘lame duck’ explains a political phenomenon that occurs in all countries where there is a period of transition in which formal power is held by a politician, but for such a limited time that nobody pays much attention to him or her. It is not a power vacuum as can occur in a war, coup d'état or revolution that threatens the continuity of a state; it is simply a time when the person in power is almost only listened to in order to open the exit door.