Concession Speeches: A Brief History of Keeping it Classy
Microphones stand on stage where Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton will give her election night address on November 8, 2016 at the Javits Center in New York City. Both Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump are scheduled to hold election night events in Manhattan.
Photographer: John Moore/Getty ImagesOn Election Night in 2012, Mitt Romney was so confident that he only wrote one speech, declaring victory. In their scramble to prepare something very different, though, his team followed the decades-old precedent of a gracious concession. “The nation chose another leader,” Romney acknowledged, “and so Ann and I join with you to earnestly pray for him.”
It was a hard-fought campaign, but Romney wasn’t conceding to a candidate he’d nicknamed “Crooked Barack,” or threatened to imprison. Nor would Barack Obama, if he’d lost, have been forced to admit defeat to an opponent he’d deemed “temperamentally unfit” for the presidency.