Today is January 20, the midway point of the presidential term.
Barack Obama took the oath of office on this day two years ago, and two years from today, either Obama will take the oath again or his successor will take it for the first time.
(Technically speaking, I suppose, it is possible that a former one–term president could be elected in 2012, but there are only two of those who are living and they are both in their 80s, which makes the election of either one a pretty remote possibility.)
Then the president, whoever he or she may be, will give an inaugural address. We've been doing this on January 20 since the 1930s, and we will do so for the 20th time on this day in 2013.
Inaugural Day is always a day of pageantry, of pomp and circumstance, and there is always a big buildup for a president's remarks, but they are usually ceremonial and symbolic, and rarely are they truly memorable.
John F. Kennedy's inaugural address, delivered half a century ago today, was different.
The most obvious difference, I suppose, was the presence of his famous line: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."It has become as familiar to Americans as any other iconic presidential statement from American history.
For some politicians, I guess, those words would have no real meaning beyond the power they had to move the listeners. But, spoken by Kennedy, the line carried a credibility that came from the knowledge that the man who said it had been injured and nearly lost his life in service to his country.
It was possibly the most memorable thing Kennedy ever said — and that would be saying a lot. Perhaps no other president — with the exceptions, I think, of Lincoln and FDR — said things that have been more widely quoted or remembered over the years.
Kennedy inspired many of the young people of his day to go into public service — including a young man named Bill Clinton. The inaugural address he gave 50 years ago today was one of his most inspirational and enduring speeches.
As Nathan Rott says at NPR.com, Kennedy's words continue to inspire people in the 21st century.
They even inspired one of my favorite moments in the finale of The West Wing, one of my favorite TV series of all time, when the outgoing president and the incoming president had a brief conversation about the new president's planned address.
The outgoing president made a general inquiry about the speech, and the incoming president told him it was good "but there's no 'Ask not what your country can do for you' in it."
"Yeah," the outgoing president replied, "Kennedy really screwed us with that one, didn't he?"
Loosely translated, Kennedy set the bar so high on this day in 1961 that practically no future president could clear it.
E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post writes that none of the presidents who have followed have been able to match it, and he is right.
"Tethered to its time and place," Dionne writes, "it still challenges with its ambition to harness realism to idealism, patriotism to service, national interest to universal aspiration."
That "Ask not ..." line was a damned good one, most people would agree, and it justifiably occupies a significant role in presidential oratorical history. Kennedy's call to public service still speaks to us, echoing across the decades.
But there are other words he spoke that day that carry special relevance to the times in which we live.
"[C]ivility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof," Kennedy said. "Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate."
It's ironic, I think, that Kennedy's brother–in–law, Sargent Shriver, died a couple of days before this anniversary.
All of the Kennedys played roles, whether visible or relatively invisible, in JFK's administration, but Shriver, as director of the Peace Corps, helped Kennedy carry out one of his very first acts as president.
It might be interesting to know what Shriver's opinion of JFK's inaugural address was after half a century, but I doubt that he mentioned it before he died. He suffered from Alzheimer's disease for many years.
In spite of Shriver's achievements, both during and after the Kennedy administration, I suspect he might be inclined to agree with Liz Sidoti of the Associated Press, who reminds us that "[t]his is no age of Camelot."
Sidoti seems to be thinking of the expectations that surrounded Barack Obama's recent journey to Tucson for the memorial service for the victims of the shooting. I felt — as did many others — that Obama tried (even if he did not always succeed) to strike a centrist tone in his remarks.
Other observers were disappointed because they felt the speech didn't go far enough, and others were upset because they felt it went too far.
In the modern polarized political climate, Sidoti suggests that the speech is "outdated." And, I suppose, to an extent, it is. Kennedy was speaking to the Americans of the early 1960s, not the Americans of the early 2010s.
"Yet some of the most memorable imagery in Kennedy's story line," Sidoti writes, "remains potent in a nation searching for renewed purpose and vision."
In the context of history, yes, 1961 was quite different than 2011.
In 1961, a Barack Obama could never be president. In many places, he couldn't even vote.
America's adversaries were different. The challenges of the immediate future were different.
But it wasn't really so different. America was then, as it is now, a work in progress. And Kennedy recognized that. He knew that the optimistic, idealistic goals of which he spoke could not be achieved immediately.
"All this will not be finished in the first 100 days," he conceded. "Nor will it be finished in the first 1,000 days, nor in the life of this administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin."
And as his address came to a close, he issued a challenge to the people of his generation. It still has relevance today.
"The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it — and the glow from that fire can truly light the world."
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