POSTSCRIPT: It was a nothing speech. Clichéd, abstract, predictable—every sentence worked at and struggled with. The encomiums are coming in now, testifying to the ritual pieties of the press. But even here, among people desperate to say something nice, they’re grasping. (“That he was willing to sound so somber on his day of celebration tells us many things at once,” is an example, by Nancy Gibbs in Time, of the blather.) Something went wrong. (He even got the number of people who’ve taken the oath wrong. Sheesh.) Maybe he did actually write it himself—and in the end clutched and gave up. After all, he had the absolute attention of the world, and used only 20 minutes. Or maybe he’s just lowering expectations.
P.P.S: Obama may be the 44th president, but he is the 43rd person to be president. Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms.
TODAY'S EARLIER POST
This is the most important day of a presidency. It’s the emotional high point. You’re not going to do better than this. It’s the moment when you have the best chance to impress an image, a phrase, a sensation on the public.
You get an absolute pass, too: The media lays it on thick. All inaugurals are history before our eyes, the start of a new this and that, a great day in a great country. (Notably, the inaugural blah blah has spread to other countries. The Guardian offers a particularly excruciating example today: “Today a magic spell will be performed. A man who 12 weeks ago was a mere political candidate will be
transformed with the incantation of a few words…into…even the embodiment, of the most powerful nation on earth.” Oy.)
Every new administration knows this and tries to capitalize on it—hence the Obama administration’s expenditure of $125 million.
The standard is the Kennedy inaugural. Nobody’s done better since: It seemed to be a picture of a torch actually being passed. No inaugural address has been so often quoted.
Can you approximate that?
Except that to the extent you are seen self-consciously trying to approximate that, you get dinged. Every inaugural since the Kennedy one has been, in its self-consciousness, and in its failure to match the pictures and words to the emotional expectations, a falling off.
Everyone since, at his own inauguration, seemed to be trying to play a role, but not to be a good enough actor—neither quite looking the part, nor speaking it well enough. Presidents tend to come out of their inaugurals, in some sense, as would-be presidents. Even according them the benefit of the doubt, we’re mostly a little dubious.
(AP Image)
The excitement now, as large as any I remember (though, in my recollection, not greater than that at the inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1980, and Bill Clinton in 1992), is about the anticipation
that this is somebody who can define a new role and play to it.
This is why—it shouldn’t seem querulous to say—we elected him: Because he looks the part (or looks the part because he doesn’t look the part). He’s put together image and language.
Today is when it counts most.
michael@newser.com
