An American Tradition: Defeated Candidates Attending The President-elect's Inauguration

In January 1981, Jimmy Carter nodded politely toward Ronald Reagan as the new Republican president thanked the Democrat for his administration's help after Reagan resoundingly defeated Carter the previous November.

Twenty years earlier, after a much closer race, Republican Richard Nixon clasped John F. Kennedy's hand and offered the new Democratic president a word of encouragement.

The U.S. has a long tradition of defeated presidential candidates sharing the inauguration stage with the people who defeated them, projecting to the world the orderly transfer of power. It's a practice that Vice President Kamala Harris will resume on Jan. 20 after an eight-year hiatus.

Only once in the television era - with its magnifying effect on a losing candidate's expression - has a defeated candidate skipped the exercise. That candidate, former President Donald Trump , left for Florida after a failed effort to overturn his loss based on false or unfounded theories of voter fraud.

With Harris watching, Trump is scheduled to stand on the Capitol's west steps and be sworn in for a second term.