What the best inaugural addresses have in common

The best inaugural addresses have all been short. (Hint, hint, Donald.)

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An inaugural address can be a defining moment
for a president and certain lines become iconic.

"Ask not what your country can do for you,
ask what you can do for your country."

But why do some addresses echo
through history while others don’t?

I asked

Kathleen Hall Jamieson

I am director of the Annenberg Public Policy
Center at The University of Pennsylvania

And what she told me is that an inaugural
address should do three things:

unify the country, announce guiding principles,
and affirm the limits of power.

So let’s take those one by one, starting
with the need to unify the country.

One of the more important characteristics
of an inaugural is that it establishes that

this is the president of all the people.

Coming after a campaign, a president’s first
task to heal a divided electorate.

In 1801, Jefferson welcomed his opponents
when he said,

“Every difference of opinion is not a difference
of principle.

We have called by different names brethren
of the same principle.

We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”

And in 1953, Eisenhower echoed Jefferson’s
plea for unity,

"May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual
aim of those who, under the concepts of our

Constitution, hold to differing political
faiths…”

Eisenhower’s inaugural explicitly suggests
that we are coming together in this moment

regardless of the kind of partisan divisions
that we have had in the past.

That’s actually a common theme across the inaugurals.

We remember it more when it is phrased more
memorably, as it is with Jefferson

or Eisenhower, but you’ll actually find
an element of it

in virtually all of the inaugural addresses.

Second, an inaugural should announce principles
that will guide the presidency.

“We'll restore science to its rightful place,
and wield technology's wonders

to raise health care's quality and lower its cost.”

But, unlike the state of the union, the inaugural
should focus on principles, not policy.

When you get to policy proposals, you’re
back in campaign mode.

“In this present crisis, government is not
the solution to our problem;

government is the problem.”

Notice that when Reagan said, ‘government
isn’t the solution, government is the problem’,

what he was essentially doing was articulating
a principle, not saying,

‘and as a result, I recommend that we do x, y, and z.’

The philosophy of the president is embodied
in an inaugural and if it’s maintained at

a level of principle it is not highly problematic.

Third, an inaugural affirms the limits of
power, stating that no one is above the law.

One concern -- when you let some president
-- particularly among those who didn’t vote

for the candidate -- is that person may overreach
and may misuse the power or use the power

in ways that will hurt the people that did
not vote for the president.

Look at the passage in Gerald Ford’s inaugural
address

-- which was, in effect his inaugural address -- that begins,

“...our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works;

our great Republic is a government of laws
and not of men.”

That is a repudiation of the Nixon Presidency.
Ford is affirming it explicitly:

that no president is above the law.

That’s the speech that tells us that, in
language that we should always remember.

Besides indicating what the address should
be about, past inaugurals suggest

how a president should deliver it.

First, they should keep it short.

People who assume that you have to speak at
length in order to be eloquent are wrong.

A leader’s message should be clear and concise.

The three shortest speeches were delivered
by some of the most respected presidents,

albeit during subsequent inaugurals;

while the three longest came from some less well-known

presidents, including William Henry Harrison,
who aggravated a cold during his epic inaugural

and died the next month from pneumonia.

Second...

Put the campaign behind you.

Do not be Ulysses S. Grant, who whines about
having a scandal-ridden campaign.

“I have been the subject of abuse and slander
scarcely ever equaled in political history,

which today I feel that I can afford to disregard
in view of your verdict,

which I gratefully accept as my vindication.”

If you come out of an inaugural address feeling
as if the candidate is still there and the

president isn’t -- we’re still in campaign
mode, this isn’t a president speaking --

it’s a failed address.

A third caution is to avoid making it about
yourself, which a president can do by using

“we” instead of “I”.

When you’re trying to speak to a nation
that has been divided by a campaign, the unifying

rhetoric requires that the audience hear itself
in the rhetoric.

And as a result, the collective rhetoric -- the
rhetoric of “we” -- is the characterizing

rhetoric of the best inaugural addresses.

“…let me assert my firm belief that the
only thing we have to fear is...

fear itself.”

Lastly, and most importantly, we tend to remember
inaugurals..

...because history vindicated the observation
and the observation was made memorably.

So, you might say that the deciding factor
for a successful inaugural speech

is the presidency that follows.

There’s a reason we remember FDR and Kennedy.

Both were speaking at a point of crisis and
their words inspired a future that would follow.

But no president did this better than Abraham
Lincoln, who on the eve of Civil War,

predicted a Union victory when he said:

“The mystic chords of memory,

stretching from every battlefield and patriot
grave to every living heart and hearthstone

all over this broad land,

will yet swell the chorus of the Union,

when again touched, as surely they will be,

by the better angels of our nature.”