This diary is the fourth in a series of five on the history of US Presidential Inaugurations.
In Part 1, I examined inaugural addresses from George Washington through James Buchanan.
In Part 2, I wrote about inaugural speeches from Lincoln through McKinley.
Part 3 covered the time from Teddy Roosevelt through Franklin Roosevelt.
This diary will examine the remaining inaugural addresses in two parts: "Cold War" and "Conservatism."
Tomorrow, in the last diary of the series, I will summarize inaugural addresses past and speculate on what we can expect from our 44th President on 1.20.09.
Links to all presidential inauguration addresses can be found at Bartleby.com.
My thanks to those who have read, recommended, and/or commented upon previous diaries. I hope you continue to enjoy the series.
COLD WAR (1949-1977: Harry S. Truman-Jimmy Carter)
By the time of Harry Truman's inauguration in 1949, the threat of communism had become the nation's prevailing concern. Truman spent much of his speech drawing a sharp distinction between two conflicting ideologies:
In the pursuit of these aims, the United States and other like-minded nations find themselves directly opposed by a regime with contrary aims and a totally different concept of life.
That regime adheres to a false philosophy which purports to offer freedom, security, and greater opportunity to mankind. Misled by this philosophy, many peoples have sacrificed their liberties only to learn to their sorrow that deceit and mockery, poverty and tyranny, are their reward.
That false philosophy is communism.
Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters.
Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.
Communism subjects the individual to arrest without lawful cause, punishment without trial, and forced labor as the chattel of the state. It decrees what information he shall receive, what art he shall produce, what leaders he shall follow, and what thoughts he shall think.
Democracy maintains that government is established for the benefit of the individual, and is charged with the responsibility of protecting the rights of the individual and his freedom in the exercise of his abilities.
Communism maintains that social wrongs can be corrected only by violence.
Democracy has proved that social justice can be achieved through peaceful change.
Communism holds that the world is so deeply divided into opposing classes that war is inevitable.
Democracy holds that free nations can settle differences justly and maintain lasting peace.
These differences between communism and democracy do not concern the United States alone. People everywhere are coming to realize that what is involved is material well-being, human dignity, and the right to believe in and worship God.
I state these differences, not to draw issues of belief as such, but because the actions resulting from the Communist philosophy are a threat to the efforts of free nations to bring about world recovery and lasting peace.
Of course, Truman mentioned two things that he helped to effect and that he was most proud of--the UN and the Marshall Plan--and a third that was in the works--NATO.
We have constantly and vigorously supported the United Nations and related agencies as a means of applying democratic principles to international relations.
(snip)
Almost a year ago, in company with 16 free nations of Europe, we launched the greatest cooperative economic program in history. The purpose of that unprecedented effort is to invigorate and strengthen democracy in Europe, so that the free people of that continent can resume their rightful place in the forefront of civilization and can contribute once more to the security and welfare of the world.
(snip)
We are now working out with a number of countries a joint agreement designed to strengthen the security of the North Atlantic area. Such an agreement would take the form of a collective defense arrangement within the terms of the United Nations Charter.
Dwight Eisenhower, another man not particularly renowned for his oratory, took the oath in 1953 while the US was at war with North Korea and, by extension, Communist China.
While all Presidents have called upon a Supreme Being for help, Eisenhower was the first to open his inaugural address with his own prayer.
Ike was naturally preoccupied with foreign policy as his term began. Ike certainly felt the tension of the rising Cold War, and, like Reagan thirty years later, viewed the communist regime of the USSR as "evil":
We sense with all our faculties that forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history.
This fact defines the meaning of this day.
Ike's view led to these rhetorical inquiries:
How far have we come in man's long pilgrimage from darkness toward light? Are we nearing the light—a day of freedom and of peace for all mankind? Or are the shadows of another night closing in upon us?
Eisenhower, not admired for his speechifying, still managed some nice prose in this passage about the nuclear threat:
This trial comes at a moment when man's power to achieve good or to inflict evil surpasses the brightest hopes and the sharpest fears of all ages. We can turn rivers in their courses, level mountains to the plains. Oceans and land and sky are avenues for our colossal commerce. Disease diminishes and life lengthens.
Yet the promise of this life is imperiled by the very genius that has made it possible. Nations amass wealth. Labor sweats to create—and turns out devices to level not only mountains but also cities. Science seems ready to confer upon us, as its final gift, the power to erase human life from this planet.
At such a time in history, we who are free must proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws.
Eisenhower went on to outline nine guiding principles for his foreign policy and left domestic concerns for another day.
Ike opened his Second Inaugural with this rhetorical flourish:
May we pursue the right—without self-righteousness.
May we know unity—without conformity.
May we grow in strength—without pride in self.
May we, in our dealings with all peoples of the earth, ever speak truth and serve justice.
Economic times were good:
In our nation work and wealth abound. Our population grows. Commerce crowds our rivers and rails, our skies, harbors, and highways. Our soil is fertile, our agriculture productive. The air rings with the song of our industry—rolling mills and blast furnaces, dynamos, dams, and assembly lines—the chorus of America the bountiful.
Ike did acknowledge poverty as a worldwide problem, but he still sang the "Better Dead than Red" Song:
The divisive force is International Communism and the power that it controls.
But, Eisenhower noted, it was communist ideology and not the people of Russia who were the problem:
We honor, no less in this divided world than in a less tormented time, the people of Russia. We do not dread, rather do we welcome, their progress in education and industry. We wish them success in their demands for more intellectual freedom, greater security before their own laws, fuller enjoyment of the rewards of their own toil. For as such things come to pass, the more certain will be the coming of that day when our peoples may freely meet in friendship.
As Eisenhower exited at age 70, JFK entered at age 43 and gave one of the most memorable of all inaugural addresses.
Kennedy offered these striking paragraphs early in the speech:
Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans—born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage—and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
JFK also hit this note, which would later manifest itself in the Peace Corps:
To those peoples in the huts and villages across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required—not because the Communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
JFK remained tough on communism, pledging to continue the arms race, but he also offered, in one of Obama's favorite lines, to meet with the Soviets:
So let us begin anew—remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
Of course, Kennedy closed with what has become his signature line:
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you.
Kennedy's speech is rare among inaugural addresses in that it is his most famous speech. One can always speculate as well: Would the inaugural be as memorable if Kennedy had lived to a ripe old age? I think so. The language is amazing and Kennedy's delivery was very good.
Regardless, Kennedy's address is rooted in the American psyche today more than any other inaugural in American history.
LBJ, despite his basset hound appearance and sonorous voice, could give a good speech. Of course with writers like Bill Moyers and Doris Kearns and Richard Goodwin around, he had help.
His inaugural address, given in 1965, is the most formally structured of all the inaugurals. He divides his speech into two major parts: The American Covenant (subdivided into Justice and Change, Liberty and Change, and Union and Change) and The American Belief.
In Justice and Change he says:
In a land of great wealth, families must not live in hopeless poverty. In a land rich in harvest, children just must not go hungry. In a land of healing miracles, neighbors must not suffer and die unattended. In a great land of learning and scholars, young people must be taught to read and write.
(snip)
Before this generation of Americans is finished, this enemy will not only retreat—it will be conquered.
Justice requires us to remember that when any citizen denies his fellow, saying, "His color is not mine," or "His beliefs are strange and different," in that moment he betrays America, though his forebears created this Nation.
In Liberty and Change, Johnson brings us into the space age:
Think of our world as it looks from the rocket that is heading toward Mars. It is like a child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to its side like colored maps.
(snip)
How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another.
And in Union and Change, LBJ implores:
So let us reject any among us who seek to reopen old wounds and to rekindle old hatreds. They stand in the way of a seeking nation.
In The American Belief, Johnson references his signature domestic agenda:
I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming—always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again—but always trying and always gaining.
LBJ closed his speech by evoking Kennedy's death and his first, impromptu inaugural address:
I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: "I will lead and I will do the best I can."
LBJ never mentioned Vietnam, but four years later, it was Richard Nixon taking the oath after Democratic resistance to the war forced Johnson to withdraw from the primaries.
Nixon opened his speech with optimism, praising the effectiveness of MAD--Mutually Assured Destruction:
For the first time, because the people of the world want peace, and the leaders of the world are afraid of war, the times are on the side of peace.
Later, Nixon invoked both FDR and Lincoln in a call for unity:
Standing in this same place a third of a century ago, Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed a Nation ravaged by depression and gripped in fear. He could say in surveying the Nation's troubles: "They concern, thank God, only material things."
Our crisis today is the reverse.
We have found ourselves rich in goods, but ragged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.
We are caught in war, wanting peace. We are torn by division, wanting unity. We see around us empty lives, wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing, waiting for hands to do them.
To a crisis of the spirit, we need an answer of the spirit.
To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves.
When we listen to "the better angels of our nature," we find that they celebrate the simple things, the basic things—such as goodness, decency, love, kindness.
Greatness comes in simple trappings.
The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.
To lower our voices would be a simple thing.
(snip)
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another—until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.
The rest of the speech is a list of homilies, mostly on the subject of world peace.
For example, Nixon says:
We cannot expect to make everyone our friend, but we can try to make no one our enemy.
At his Second Inaugural following his landslide victory over McGovern, Nixon, who always felt that foreign policy was his strength, spared no words in praising himself:
This past year saw far-reaching results from our new policies for peace. By continuing to revitalize our traditional friendships, and by our missions to Peking and to Moscow, we were able to establish the base for a new and more durable pattern of relationships among the nations of the world. Because of America's bold initiatives, 1972 will be long remembered as the year of the greatest progress since the end of World War II toward a lasting peace in the world.
Of course, the Vietnam War was still raging.
Nixon also laid the groundwork for Reagan's "government is the problem" schtick in these lines:
We have lived too long with the consequences of attempting to gather all power and responsibility in Washington.
Abroad and at home, the time has come to turn away from the condescending policies of paternalism—of "Washington knows best."
Want some more GOP talking points? Try this:
Our children have been taught to be ashamed of their country, ashamed of their parents, ashamed of America's record at home and of its role in the world.
At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with America and little that is right. But I am confident that this will not be the judgment of history on these remarkable times in which we are privileged to live.
Ah, echoes of Pat Buchanan.
In closing, Nixon offered this line:
We shall answer to God, to history, and to our conscience for the way in which we use these years.
I'm not certain about the existence of God or of Nixon's conscience, but given that he resigned from office in disgrace a year and a half later, Nixon certainly will answer to history.
Although Gerald Ford never gave a formal inaugural address, he is remembered for his opening line in his impromptu inaugural:
Our long national nightmare is over.
Jimmy Carter was the next President to stand on the Capitol steps and be sworn in.
Carter, of course, ran as the ultimate Washington outsider, promising amnesty for Vietnam War protesters to counterbalance Ford's pardon of Nixon. Nevertheless, Carter's opening words were genuine praise for Ford:
For myself and for our Nation, I want to thank my predecessor for all he has done to heal our land.
Of Watergate, he said:
Let our recent mistakes bring a resurgent commitment to the basic principles of our Nation, for we know that if we despise our own government we have no future.
Carter also stated the principle upon which he founded his foreign policy:
Our commitment to human rights must be absolute.
(snip)
Our moral sense dictates a clear cut preference for these societies which share with us an abiding respect for individual human rights.
By the end of the Carter era, OPEC had raised oil prices, fueling the rampant inflation that was Nixon's legacy, and Americans were being held hostage in Iran. Angry about Vietnam, embarrassed by Watergate, humiliated by Iran, and caught in an inflationary spiral, the nation turned away from the progressive ideals of FDR and embraced the conservative philosophy of an aw-shucks B-movie actor named Ronald Reagan.
CONSERVATISM (1981-2005: Ronald Reagan-George W. Bush)
That Ronald Reagan changed American politics is clear. Whether that change was good or bad will be determined by history, but there is no denying that Reagan espoused laissez-faire capitalism. He signaled the shift clearly in his speech, first by calling for a balanced budget:
But great as our tax burden is, it has not kept pace with public spending. For decades, we have piled deficit upon deficit, mortgaging our future and our children's future for the temporary convenience of the present. To continue this long trend is to guarantee tremendous social, cultural, political, and economic upheavals.
You and I, as individuals, can, by borrowing, live beyond our means, but for only a limited period of time. Why, then, should we think that collectively, as a nation, we are not bound by that same limitation?
Ironically, Reagan would create the largest deficits in US history at the time, more than doubling the national debt from less than $1 trillion to $2 trillion over his eight-year tenure.
But Reagan was convinced that government was to blame for most of the nation's economic and social ills:
In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem.
(snip)
So, as we begin, let us take inventory. We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.
Reagan was also the first to "tell a story" in an inaugural address, a brilliant and effective rhetorical device, as he closed his speech:
Under one such marker [in Arlington National Cemetery] lies a young man—Martin Treptow—who left his job in a small town barber shop in 1917 to go to France with the famed Rainbow Division. There, on the western front, he was killed trying to carry a message between battalions under heavy artillery fire.
We are told that on his body was found a diary. On the flyleaf under the heading, "My Pledge," he had written these words: "America must win this war. Therefore, I will work, I will save, I will sacrifice, I will endure, I will fight cheerfully and do my utmost, as if the issue of the whole struggle depended on me alone."
The crisis we are facing today does not require of us the kind of sacrifice that Martin Treptow and so many thousands of others were called upon to make. It does require, however, our best effort, and our willingness to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds; to believe that together, with God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us.
The only problem with the story was that Reagan knew in advance that Treptow was buried in Bloomer, WI, not Arlington, but he lied because he thought it made a better story. His aides admitted "the mistake" but did not reveal that Reagan knew it in advance. See pp. 74-77 at this link for a fascinating account of this in Lou Cannon's President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.
At Reagan's Second Inaugural, it was the same song, second verse:
We must never again abuse the trust of working men and women, by sending their earnings on a futile chase after the spiraling demands of a bloated Federal Establishment. You elected us in 1980 to end this prescription for disaster, and I don't believe you reelected us in 1984 to reverse course.
(snip)
But an almost unbroken 50 years of deficit spending has finally brought us to a time of reckoning. We have come to a turning point, a moment for hard decisions. I have asked the Cabinet and my staff a question, and now I put the same question to all of you: If not us, who? And if not now, when? It must be done by all of us going forward with a program aimed at reaching a balanced budget. We can then begin reducing the national debt.
I will shortly submit a budget to the Congress aimed at freezing government program spending for the next year. Beyond that, we must take further steps to permanently control Government's power to tax and spend. We must act now to protect future generations from Government's desire to spend its citizens' money and tax them into servitude when the bills come due. Let us make it unconstitutional for the Federal Government to spend more than the Federal Government takes in.
The balanced budget amendment. What ever happened to that?
Furthermore, Reagan postulated, the milk of human kindness would flow, leaving no need for government to help the people:
Now, there is a place for the Federal Government in matters of social compassion. But our fundamental goals must be to reduce dependency and upgrade the dignity of those who are infirm or disadvantaged. And here a growing economy and support from family and community offer our best chance for a society where compassion is a way of life, where the old and infirm are cared for, the young and, yes, the unborn protected, and the unfortunate looked after and made self-sufficient.
On the foreign policy front, in an attempt to offer an alternative to mutually assured destruction, Reagan introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative, better known as "Star Wars":
I have approved a research program to find, if we can, a security shield that would destroy nuclear missiles before they reach their target. It wouldn't kill people, it would destroy weapons. It wouldn't militarize space, it would help demilitarize the arsenals of Earth. It would render nuclear weapons obsolete. We will meet with the Soviets, hoping that we can agree on a way to rid the world of the threat of nuclear destruction.
Reagan ended his oration with this well-written passage (Peggy Noonan's perhaps?):
History is a ribbon, always unfurling; history is a journey. And as we continue our journey, we think of those who traveled before us.... Now we hear again the echoes of our past: a general falls to his knees in the hard snow of Valley Forge; a lonely President paces the darkened halls, and ponders his struggle to preserve the Union; the men of the Alamo call out encouragement to each other; a settler pushes west and sings a song, and the song echoes out forever and fills the unknowing air.
It is the American sound. It is hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That's our heritage; that is our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old, as we raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music. And may He continue to hold us close as we fill the world with our sound—sound in unity, affection, and love—one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world.
In 1989, George H.W. Bush, like Eisenhower in 1953, began his speech with a prayer. Then he offered this optimistic outlook:
For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on. There is new ground to be broken, and new action to be taken. There are times when the future seems thick as a fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path. But this is a time when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow.
(snip)
We know what works: Freedom works. We know what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free will unhampered by the state.
But true to his mentor, Reagan, Bush eschewed government as a solution to the nation's problems, choosing instead to repeat his only famous line:
My friends, we have work to do. There are the homeless, lost and roaming. There are the children who have nothing, no love, no normalcy. There are those who cannot free themselves of enslavement to whatever addiction—drugs, welfare, the demoralization that rules the slums. There is crime to be conquered, the rough crime of the streets. There are young women to be helped who are about to become mothers of children they can't care for and might not love. They need our care, our guidance, and our education, though we bless them for choosing life.
The old solution, the old way, was to think that public money alone could end these problems. But we have learned that is not so. And in any case, our funds are low.... We will turn to the only resource we have that in times of need always grows—the goodness and the courage of the American people.
(snip)
I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding.
Bush also called for bipartisanship, fingering Vietnam as the source of the new political enmity:
For Congress, too, has changed in our time. There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other. It has been this way since Vietnam. That war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached. This is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory. A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new again.
Finally, Bush emphasized the War on Drugs:
There are few clear areas in which we as a society must rise up united and express our intolerance. The most obvious now is drugs. And when that first cocaine was smuggled in on a ship, it may as well have been a deadly bacteria, so much has it hurt the body, the soul of our country. And there is much to be done and to be said, but take my word for it: This scourge will stop.
Like his hero JFK 32 years before, Bill Clinton marked a generational change in American leadership. For the first time, a Baby Boomer was elected POTUS. Clinton marked the change:
Today, a generation raised in the shadows of the Cold War assumes new responsibilities in a world warmed by the sunshine of freedom but threatened still by ancient hatreds and new plagues.
Raised in unrivaled prosperity, we inherit an economy that is still the world's strongest, but is weakened by business failures, stagnant wages, increasing inequality, and deep divisions among our people.
Noting the rapid onset of globalization and technological advances, Clinton said:
Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world, and the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.
(snip)
Thomas Jefferson believed that to preserve the very foundations of our nation, we would need dramatic change from time to time. Well, my fellow citizens, this is our time. Let us embrace it.
Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
In the midst of recession and spiraling national debt, Clinton said:
We must do what no generation has had to do before. We must invest more in our own people, in their jobs, in their future, and at the same time cut our massive debt. And we must do so in a world in which we must compete for every opportunity.
Then Clinton delivered his campaign mantra:
We must do what America does best: offer more opportunity to all and demand responsibility from all.
Finally, Clinton recognized the new world order:
Today, as an old order passes, the new world is more free but less stable. Communism's collapse has called forth old animosities and new dangers. Clearly America must continue to lead the world we did so much to make.
In his Second Inaugural, Clinton rebuked Reagan's vision of government and offered this instead:
Today we can declare: Government is not the problem, and government is not the solution.
(snip)
We need a new government for a new century—humble enough not to try to solve all our problems for us, but strong enough to give us the tools to solve our problems for ourselves; a government that is smaller, lives within its means, and does more with less. Yet where it can stand up for our values and interests in the world, and where it can give Americans the power to make a real difference in their everyday lives, government should do more, not less. The preeminent mission of our new government is to give all Americans an opportunity—not a guarantee, but a real opportunity—to build better lives.
Clinton also observed:
As this new era approaches we can already see its broad outlines. Ten years ago, the Internet was the mystical province of physicists; today, it is a commonplace encyclopedia for millions of schoolchildren. Scientists now are decoding the blueprint of human life. Cures for our most feared illnesses seem close at hand.
(snip)
And for the very first time in all of history, more people on this planet live under democracy than dictatorship.
Of course, Clinton also included a nod to his campaign slogan--"Building a Bridge to the 21st Century":
Yes, let us build our bridge. A bridge wide enough and strong enough for every American to cross over to a blessed land of new promise.
Republican George W. Bush promised a return to Reaganomics in his First Inaugural:
We will reform Social Security and Medicare, sparing our children from struggles we have the power to prevent. And we will reduce taxes, to recover the momentum of our economy and reward the effort and enterprise of working Americans.
Otherwise, he didn't say much although his tone was almost sweet. He tried for eloquence in this closing passage:
After the Declaration of Independence was signed, Virginia statesman John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson: "We know the race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong. Do you not think an angel rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm?"
(snip)
Never tiring, never yielding, never finishing, we renew that purpose today, to make our country more just and generous, to affirm the dignity of our lives and every life.
This work continues. This story goes on. And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm.
Bush's Second Inaugural was post-9/11 so his world view was irrevocably changed. Early in his speech he says:
For a half a century, America defended our own freedom by standing watch on distant borders. After the shipwreck of communism came years of relative quiet, years of repose, years of sabbatical—and then there came a day of fire.
We have seen our vulnerability—and we have seen its deepest source. For as long as whole regions of the world simmer in resentment and tyranny—prone to ideologies that feed hatred and excuse murder—violence will gather, and multiply in destructive power, and cross the most defended borders, and raise a mortal threat. There is only one force of history that can break the reign of hatred and resentment, and expose the pretensions of tyrants, and reward the hopes of the decent and tolerant, and that is the force of human freedom.
We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.
America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.
The almost timid speaker of the First Inaugural had given way to the mindset of a War President:
My most solemn duty is to protect this nation and its people from further attacks and emerging threats. Some have unwisely chosen to test America’s resolve, and have found it firm.
And, of course, when it came to Iraq, the Decider had decided:
Our country has accepted obligations that are difficult to fulfill, and would be dishonorable to abandon. Yet because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts, we have lit a fire as well—a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power, it burns those who fight its progress, and one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world.
Bush sums up:
From the perspective of a single day, including this day of dedication, the issues and questions before our country are many. From the viewpoint of centuries, the questions that come to us are narrowed and few. Did our generation advance the cause of freedom? And did our character bring credit to that cause?
Interesting questions indeed.
SUMMARY OF PART 4
Harry Truman set the tone for forty years of foreign policy when he established communism as the enemy. Over the same period, in the wake of four terms of FDR, domestic policy remained left of center, reaching its culmination in LBJ and its death throes in the inflationary spiral that consumed Jimmy Carter.
Reagan was a watershed. Reaganomics dominated domestic policy until at least 2006 and appears officially dead in 2008. On the foreign policy front, the USSR collapsed, ending the Cold War, which was more of a Lukewarm War once Gorbachev took power anyway. Bush I and Clinton dealt with regional concerns in Iraq and the Balkans but remained reluctant to engage. Clinton in particular, as a product of the Vietnam era, wanted to avoid large commitments of US ground forces. Bush II had a much more profound impact. He changed two and a quarter centuries of fundamental American foreign policy by sanctioning preemptive war.
Rhetorically, the speeches as a whole are not bad. Teams of speechwriters crafted the addresses more and more. (Calvin Coolidge is believed to be the first to employ a titled speechwriter.) As America moved into the television and, later, the internet ages, physical appearance and delivery became more and more important. Truman's Missouri twang was ill-suited for oratory, but he had an everyman charm. Ike could give a decent speech but lacked the energy and vitality of a JFK or Clinton. Kennedy was obviously the top of the class. His speech was filled with memorable lines and his charisma, timing, and intonation were outstanding.
LBJ was too ugly for TV but could be extremely eloquent at times, particularly when advocating for the downtrodden. Nixon, of course, had his own problems with TV, but was not a bad speech maker for all that. Carter was energetic and sincere but fell short in likability. Reagan was the country's genial grandfather figure. His eternal optimism was infectious, and he remains the GOP icon.
George H. W. Bush was a genuinely humble man. He learned a lot from Reagan and became more likable as he grew older. He was the first Bush to adopt a fake Texas cadence, and it served him well. Personally, I always thought he must have copied John Wayne.
Bill Clinton, of course, gave a dynamite speech. With Clinton, it wasn't so much what he said as how he made the voters feel. His gift was his empathy and his boyish enthusiasm. No one can doubt that Clinton loves being a politician; he's like a pig in slop.
At first, George W. Bush seemed to be a more milquetoast version of his father. He ran against Clinton's shenanigans in his first presidential campaign, projecting an image of the "guy you'd like to have a beer with." His First Inaugural confirms this image. After 9/11, he tried to project a much tougher image that came off as smugness to his political opponents. Bush's classic problems with grammar and diction did not arise in his inaugural speeches, but he will likely be well down on the list of presidential orators.
See you later, alligator. Part 5 tomorrow.
SPECIAL BONUS SECTION: Video of JFK's Inauguration (Complete and in color!).
PART I (9:58)
PART II (5:36)
UPDATE: Here are links to the other four parts of this diary series:
Part 1 1789-1857 Washington-Buchanan
Part 2 1861-1901: Lincoln-McKinley
Part 3 1905-1945: T. Roosevelt-F. Roosevelt
Part 5 Summary and Speculation