Inaugural speeches set vision, tone

Donald Trump faces a formidable task as he delivers today’s inaugural address, an opportunity to set a better tone for his presidency.

Traditionally, inauguration speeches are full of inspiring prose. They identify the nation’s challenges, signal the new president’s goals, call the people to unity and seek to reassure doubters. None did this so eloquently as President Abraham Lincoln, whose second inaugural in 1865 came in the last days of the Civil War. He said: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Binding up the nation’s wounds is what is called for in today’s address. The new president may celebrate, but he also should try to marshal the American people and Congress behind his vision. It’s a daunting task, though Trump can take some comfort in the fact that many inaugural speeches have been less than memorable.

Still, as columnist and former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan observed, “You can trace a lot of history reading inaugural addresses.”

Here is a look at some of the best:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.”

“This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

“…We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their need they have registered a mandate that they want direct, vigorous action. They have asked for discipline and direction under leadership. They have made me the present instrument of their wishes. In the spirit of the gift I take it.”

“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. … To lower our voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

“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.”

“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.

“… Profound and powerful forces are shaking and remaking our world. … To renew America, we must be bold. 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.”

“We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around.”

“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done.”