Being President of the United States can be lonely and daunting, and only a few people alive know what it s like first hand.
One of the modern Inauguration Day traditions for presidents leaving office is to write their successors a letter offering best wishes and advice. This is usually left on the Resolute Desk to read when the new president first enters the Oval Office.
Sometimes the letter are humorous, like Ronald Reagan s pithy note to George H.W. Bush. But they re mostly an exchange of thanks and hope between the two commanders-in-chief.
Barack Obama wrote to Donald Trump about the importance of civic institutions: Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.