Ever since Thomas Jefferson hit the ball out of the park with “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, America’s political leaders have been in competition to hit another rhetorical home run.
Inauguration Day is the obvious platform on which to launch their zingers. Both FDR (“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”), and JFK, borrowing from Kahlil Gibran (“ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”), used their inaugural speeches to make their pitch. The president is also required to rise to the occasion at moments of national tragedy. Ronald Reagan was the master of this. Yes, he had great speechwriters like Peggy Noonan, but there was no one to touch him for delivery of great lines.
On other occasions, yet-to-be presidents (Barack Obama), sitting presidents (Abraham Lincoln), and retiring presidents (George Washington) have borrowed the fierce voltage of American political oratory to electrify their audiences – and fuse themselves with history.
Obama did that last week, during his farewell speech in Chicago, when he quoted from, and then riffed on, George Washington’s valedictory warning to his supporters to preserve freedom and self-government “with jealous anxiety”. In the conduct of American life, the president’s job is to be positive and optimistic. Not surprisingly, Obama chose not to follow the example of Eisenhower in his farewell warning of 1961.
Barack Obama
Keynote address to Democratic convention (2004)
“There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America – there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America, and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America.”
Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address (1863)
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal … This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and … government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
Abraham Lincoln
Second inaugural address (1865)
“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.”
George Washington
Farewell address (1796)
“The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you … but … it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth,” Washington warned, saying that his audience should reject “the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts”.
Dwight D Eisenhower
Farewell address (1961)
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Lyndon B Johnson
Voting rights speech (1965)
“What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America. It is the effort of American Negroes to secure for themselves the full blessings of American life. Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”
Ronald Reagan
After the Challenger shuttle disaster (1986)
“The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honoured us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God’.”
Ronald Reagan
Brandenburg Gate speech (1987)
“General secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalisation: come here to this gate. Mr Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Donald Trump might not be at so much of a disadvantage here. Many of his predecessors nailed the core of their message in fewer than 140 characters.
