Presidential History

To get you ready for Inauguration Day, here are ten lesser known facts about presidential inaugurations. Donald Trump will be sworn in as the forty-fifth U.S. president, but he will be only the thirty-ninth person to give an inaugural address. John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester Arthur, and Gerald Ford were all vice presidents who ascended to the presidency after the death or resignation of a president. They never won election on their own, so they never gave an inaugural address. Grover Cleveland held two nonconsecutive terms as president, and as a result, he is counted as the twenty-second and twenty-fourth president of the United States. All but two elected presidents took the oath of office in Washington. Washington, DC, did not become the nation’s capital until 1800, just before Thomas Jefferson was sworn in as America’s third president. George Washington was sworn into office for his first term in Federal Hall in New York City in 1789. He was sworn into office for his second term in the Senate Chamber of Congress Hall in Philadelphia in 1793. John Adams was sworn in as president in the House Chamber in Congress Hall in Philadelphia in 1797. (Several vice presidents have taken the oath of office outside of Washington, DC, after the death of the president.) The presidential oath of office is written into the U.S. Constitution. Article II, Section I of the Constitution stipulates: “Before he [the president] enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Even though the oath is only thirty-five words long, presidents and chief justices can get it wrong. Just ask Barack Obama and John Roberts. One person has taken the presidential oath of office and administered it. William Howard Taft was sworn in as America’s twenty-seventh president on March 4, 1909. A dozen years later he was sworn in as the tenth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. During his nine-year stint as chief justice, he issued the oath of office to Calvin Coolidge (1925) and Herbert Hoover (1929). Taft holds two other distinctions. He was America’s heaviest president, tipping the scales at more than 300 pounds. He was also the last president to sport facial hair, in his case, a handlebar moustache. More presidents have been inaugurated in March than in January. Thirty-six inaugurations have been held in March. With Trump’s inauguration, twenty-one will have been held in January. Until 1937, presidents were inaugurated on March 4. (The public inaugural ceremonies were generally moved to March 5 when Inauguration Day fell on a Sunday.) The Twentieth Amendment moved Inauguration Day to January 20 (the public ceremony can be moved to January 21 in years that Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday, as happened with Ronald Reagan’s second inaugural in 1985). FDR’s second inauguration was the first to be held in January. The only elected president not to be inaugurated in either January or March was George Washington. His first inaugural took place on April 30, 1789. John F. Kennedy was the last president to wear a hat to his inauguration. Wearing hats, in particular top hats, used to be tradition. JFK wore a stovepipe hat to his inauguration, but took it off when he took the oath of office. No president since has worn a hat to the inauguration. (Some writers list Richard Nixon as the last president to wear a hat, but I haven’t been able to find a photograph showing that he did. Please send along a link if you have one.) Lyndon Johnson was the first president to ask his wife to hold the Bible while he took the oath of office. Before LBJ, the clerk of the Supreme Court traditionally held the Bible while the president swore his oath. Johnson asked his wife, Lady Bird Johnson, to do it. Every president since has followed suit. The inauguration of James Buchanan on March 4, 1857, is the first one known to have been photographed. Other technological firsts for presidential inaugurations include the first to be filmed (William McKinley), the first to use loudspeakers (Warren Harding in 1921), the first broadcast on radio (Calvin Coolidge in 1925), the first broadcast on television (Harry Truman in 1948), the first broadcast in color (John F. Kennedy in 1961), and the first delivered over the internet (Bill Clinton in 1997). The coldest Inauguration Day was Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. The temperature at noontime in Washington, DC, on January 21, 1985, was 7 degrees—or 62 degrees colder than on the day of Reagan’s first inauguration. It was so cold that Reagan took the oath of office indoors at the U.S. Capitol—he had already taken the oath of office in a small, private ceremony at the White House the day before—and the traditional inaugural parade was canceled. The forecast for this Friday is rain, with temperatures in the upper forties. .The shortest inaugural address was a lot shorter than this blog post. Donald Trump says he wants to keep his speech short. He probably won’t go as short as George Washington did in his second inaugural address. That ran just 135 words—or about the length of two recitations of the Lord’s Prayer. This blog post, by the way, runs 924 words.  

In three days, Donald J. Trump gets to do what only thirty-eight other Americans have ever done: deliver an inaugural address. He can expect a large audience for his remarks. Nearly 38 million Americans watched Barack Obama’s first inaugural address. Trump will presumably try to unite Americans behind his vision for the country. That will be no small task. He will take office with the lowest favorability ratings of any recent U.S. president. Just 40 percent of Americans in the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll viewed him favorably. (Ronald Reagan, the president with the next lowest favorability rating upon first taking office, scored nearly twenty points higher with a 58 percent favorability rating on the eve of his 1981 inauguration.) From what we know of today’s highly partisan politics, it is hard to change people’s minds. Like most presidents, Trump won’t be writing his inaugural address himself. He has tapped his aide Stephen Miller to help him. Miller has written most of Trump’s formal speeches over the past year, including his acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, which painted a disturbingly dark view of America. We will see on Friday whether Trump continues to talk of an America in crisis or pivots to an optimistic vision. Whatever direction he takes—and he could do a bit of both—he no doubt hopes that his speech will be remembered as one of the great inaugural addresses. On that score, he’s up against some pretty stiff competition. Here is my (amended) list of the seven best inaugural addresses. Mr. Trump would do well by taking inspiration from the wisdom each of them contains. 1. Thomas Jefferson (1801). Jefferson took office as the nation’s first political parties were taking shape. His election marked the first time that the presidency passed from one party to another. The man he defeated, John Adams, was so bitter over the election results that he didn’t attend his successor’s swearing in. But Jefferson understood the moment. He reminded his fellow citizens that more united than divided them: But every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principles. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. 2. Abraham Lincoln (1861). As the United States stood on the brink of Civil War, Lincoln held out hope for his nation. He urged North and South to settle their differences within the Union rather than break it apart. His call went unheeded, but not for a lack of eloquence. I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. 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. 3. Abraham Lincoln (1865). Lincoln had good reason to be bitter as he took the oath of office for the second time. Thousands of his countrymen had died on the battlefield, and many thousands more had seen their lives uprooted. Many of his supporters wanted him to be unsparing in his treatment of the soon-to-be-defeated Confederacy. Rather than speaking of punishment and revenge, however, Lincoln delivered a speech of incredible generosity and wisdom. 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, 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. 4. Theodore Roosevelt (1905). TR took the oath of office just as the United States was coming into its own as a global power. He encouraged his fellow citizens to recognize their good fortune, and he called on them to undertake the hard work necessary to keep the United States a great power. In all, it was the inaugural address one would expect from a man who wouldn’t let a bullet stop him from giving a speech. Never before have men tried so vast and formidable an experiment as that of administering the affairs of a continent under the forms of a Democratic republic….Upon the success of our experiment much depends, not only as regards our own welfare, but as regards the welfare of mankind. 5. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1933). FDR took office during the depth of the Great Depression. Facing a country gripped with uncertainty and self-doubt, he knew he needed to restore not just the public’s confidence in the economy but also in themselves. He succeeded. 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. 6. John F. Kennedy (1961). As the 1960s dawned, Americans worried that their epic victory in World War II was being eclipsed by the inexorable march of global communism. JFK responded to these fears with a sweeping pledge that America would bear any burden in the defense of liberty. He added in an unforgettable call for Americans to support their country. And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country. 7. Ronald Reagan (1981). The 1970s were a tough decade for the United States. It lost in Vietnam. The economy sagged, Interest rates, unemployment, and deficits all soared. Reagan promised to get America’s mojo back by dismantling big government. His inaugural address ushered in what in retrospect was a new, conservative era in American politics. The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks, or months, but they will go away. They will go away because we as Americans have the capacity now, as we’ve had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom. In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. No list of the best inaugural addresses ever would be complete without mentioning which president delivered the worst one ever. You might think that the winner in this category would be William Henry Harrison. He took nearly two hours to deliver an 8,000-word speech outdoors, without a hat or coat, on a bitterly cold and snowy day. Pity the poor crowd that had to listen to that. But no, that performance only earns William Henry Harrison the runner-up prize. The worst inaugural speech ever given was by James Buchanan. Why? Because he used his 1857 speech to complain that the country was so consumed in debating slavery that it was ignoring other, more important issues. That reveals a lot about why Buchanan tops virtually every list of the worst presidents in American history.