An Unforgettable Address? Speaking to the Age

By David Nather, CQ Staff

The inaugural address of a new president is one of those events that can easily collapse under the weight of expectations. While it’s not his introduction to the nation, of course, the moment is the first time that Americans officially see the person at the podium speaking to them as their president. It is something of an introduction to the world, since the new president automatically becomes a figure of global importance for the first time.

And it’s the speech that will probably demonstrate, once and for all, whether the new president really knows what he wants his presidency to be about. If he does, that will be clear in the speech. If he doesn’t, that will be clear, too.

By now, the world knows that Barack Obama knows how to give a speech. The suspense with his inaugural address isn’t about whether he might stumble over his lines, bore his audience with a string of clichés or suggest that he thinks the Gaza Strip is a nightclub. Instead, the pressure he will face in the moments after he is sworn in as the 44th president will be quite the opposite: Everyone will expect a memorable speech. And the truth about inaugural addresses is that most of them haven’t been memorable at all.

Sure, they have produced some stirring moments. Everyone remembers Abraham Lincoln promising to “bind up the nation’s wounds” as the Civil War came to an end, Franklin D. Roosevelt assuring a nation in the depths of the Great Depression that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself” and John F. Kennedy declaring the passing of the torch. But who remembers Lyndon B. Johnson’s observation that “we are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth”? Or Bill Clinton’s celebration of “the mystery of American renewal”? Or George W. Bush ’s call to “live out our nation’s promise through civility, courage, compassion and character”?

It’s the sound of a speech straining for greatness, with no particular reason to be great. And it’s the sound Obama and his speechwriters will be trying hard to avoid as they prepare rhetoric with the potential to become the emotional highlight of the four-day inaugural celebration.

The difference this time, though, is that the nation’s dire economic circumstances — in combination with the automatically historic nature of Obama’s presidency — could provide the gravity the speech needs to stand out from the long list of forgettable ones.

To former presidential speechwriters and scholars who have studied inaugural addresses, the common elements that made the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Kennedy speeches stand out — along with a handful of others that are sometimes mentioned — are that they took place either during serious national crises or in times when significant changes were taking place. With the first African-American taking the presidential oath of office during the worst economic circumstances in three-quarters of a century, both conditions are already satisfied.

Typically, a new president’s speech is aimed at a worldwide audience, because “that inaugural address is going to define him to the world,” according to Theodore C. Sorensen, Kennedy’s chief speechwriter. On the east front of the Capitol in 1961, Kennedy focused on foreign policy because he wanted to prove to world leaders that he was prepared to lead the United States at the height of the Cold War, Sorensen said — and steered away from domestic matters because he thought they would simply “sound like the Democratic Party platform.”

But the deepening recession will compel Obama to focus on the domestic situation, Sorensen said, because “he has to give people hope, just as Roosevelt did.”
Obama has said his goal is to “capture, as best I can, the moment that we are in,” explaining in plain language the challenges the nation faces and boosting Americans’ confidence that those problems can be solved.

Whatever he says to set the stage for addressing the economic crisis will, in itself, help define both his presidency and the times. “It is a time, it strikes me, when the events themselves provide the opportunity for Obama to give what will later be classified as a great inaugural speech,” said Charles O. Jones, a presidential scholar at the University of Virginia.

Most likely, it won’t be the time to announce any scaling back of campaign promises. “He will need to temper people’s expectations somewhat,” as he did on election night, when he warned of the challenges of the economic crisis and two wars, said Jeff Shesol, a Clinton White House speechwriter. But “he has to evoke the same sense of hope and possibility that he did during the campaign. That’s what people will be looking for.”