Inaugural speeches in vogue again
As America enters its 46th presidential administration with a speech and swearing in by Joseph Biden, it’s time to check out some of the most formative words for the foundation and continuation of our gorgeous country.
Biden was expected on Wednesday to mention the violence and the unprecedented security threats that preceded the inauguration.
Because of the pandemic, Biden had nine months of practice in delivering important speeches to small audiences. But this has been a unique experience: Trump was scheduled to not be present for the changeover. That last happened when Andrew Johnson snubbed Ulysses S. Grant in 1869.
Biden’s team said the theme of the speech was to be “America United.” Biden’s Lincolnesque call for Americans to heed their better angels has become even more resonant in the two months since he defeated Trump.
Going back to the wordsmiths who helped found this nation, we checked out George Washington, the father of our country. His treasured quote was: “And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the Republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”
Note the emphasis on “American people,” who were the center of many debates about who actually controlled the election in 2020.
Lincoln was a soaring orator who delivered these celestial lines in his second inaugural address in 1865: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness of 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, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first inaugural address, 1933, provided these lofty thoughts: “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.”
John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, 1961: “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country.”
In his first inaugural address in 1993, Bill Clinton said: “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.”
Theodore Roosevelt’s second inaugural address, 1905: “Much has been given us, and much will rightfully be expected from us. We have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither.”