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What the best inaugural addresses have in common
What the best inaugural addresses have in common
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An inaugural address can be a defining moment for a president and certain lines become iconic.
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"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
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But why do some addresses echo through history while others don’t?
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I asked
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Kathleen Hall Jamieson
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I am director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at The University of Pennsylvania
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And what she told me is that an inaugural address should do three things:
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unify the country, announce guiding principles, and affirm the limits of power.
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So let’s take those one by one, starting with the need to unify the country.
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One of the more important characteristics of an inaugural is that it establishes that
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this is the president of all the people.
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Coming after a campaign, a president’s first task to heal a divided electorate.
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In 1801, Jefferson welcomed his opponents when he said,
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“Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle.
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We have called by different names brethren of the same principle.
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We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
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And in 1953, Eisenhower echoed Jefferson’s plea for unity,
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"May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our
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Constitution, hold to differing political faiths…”
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Eisenhower’s inaugural explicitly suggests that we are coming together in this moment
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regardless of the kind of partisan divisions that we have had in the past.
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That’s actually a common theme across the inaugurals.
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We remember it more when it is phrased more memorably, as it is with Jefferson
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or Eisenhower, but you’ll actually find an element of it
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in virtually all of the inaugural addresses.
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Second, an inaugural should announce principles that will guide the presidency.
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“We'll restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders
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to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.”
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But, unlike the state of the union, the inaugural should focus on principles, not policy.
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When you get to policy proposals, you’re back in campaign mode.
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“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem;
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government is the problem.”
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Notice that when Reagan said, ‘government isn’t the solution, government is the problem’,
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what he was essentially doing was articulating a principle, not saying,
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‘and as a result, I recommend that we do x, y, and z.’
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The philosophy of the president is embodied in an inaugural and if it’s maintained at
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a level of principle it is not highly problematic.
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Third, an inaugural affirms the limits of power, stating that no one is above the law.
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One concern -- when you let some president -- particularly among those who didn’t vote
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for the candidate -- is that person may overreach and may misuse the power or use the power
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in ways that will hurt the people that did not vote for the president.
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Look at the passage in Gerald Ford’s inaugural address
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-- which was, in effect his inaugural address -- that begins,
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“...our long national nightmare is over.
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Our Constitution works;
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our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men.”
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That is a repudiation of the Nixon Presidency. Ford is affirming it explicitly:
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that no president is above the law.
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That’s the speech that tells us that, in language that we should always remember.
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Besides indicating what the address should be about, past inaugurals suggest
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how a president should deliver it.
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First, they should keep it short.
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People who assume that you have to speak at length in order to be eloquent are wrong.
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A leader’s message should be clear and concise.
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The three shortest speeches were delivered by some of the most respected presidents,
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albeit during subsequent inaugurals;
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while the three longest came from some less well-known
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presidents, including William Henry Harrison, who aggravated a cold during his epic inaugural
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and died the next month from pneumonia.
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Second...
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Put the campaign behind you.
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Do not be Ulysses S. Grant, who whines about having a scandal-ridden campaign.
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“I have been the subject of abuse and slander scarcely ever equaled in political history,
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which today I feel that I can afford to disregard in view of your verdict,
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which I gratefully accept as my vindication.”
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If you come out of an inaugural address feeling as if the candidate is still there and the
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president isn’t -- we’re still in campaign mode, this isn’t a president speaking --
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it’s a failed address.
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A third caution is to avoid making it about yourself, which a president can do by using
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“we” instead of “I”.
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When you’re trying to speak to a nation that has been divided by a campaign, the unifying
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rhetoric requires that the audience hear itself in the rhetoric.
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And as a result, the collective rhetoric -- the rhetoric of “we” -- is the characterizing
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rhetoric of the best inaugural addresses.
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“…let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...
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fear itself.”
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Lastly, and most importantly, we tend to remember inaugurals..
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...because history vindicated the observation and the observation was made memorably.
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So, you might say that the deciding factor for a successful inaugural speech
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is the presidency that follows.
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There’s a reason we remember FDR and Kennedy.
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Both were speaking at a point of crisis and their words inspired a future that would follow.
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But no president did this better than Abraham Lincoln, who on the eve of Civil War,
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predicted a Union victory when he said:
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“The mystic chords of memory,
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stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone
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all over this broad land,
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will yet swell the chorus of the Union,
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when again touched, as surely they will be,
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by the better angels of our nature.”
What the best inaugural addresses have in common - Video học tiếng Anh
