Inauguration Day

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"The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer."

Donald Trump, Jan. 20, 2017

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Donald Trump became the 45th president of the United States yesterday.

Now there are 11 words I never expected to string together in a sentence.

I didn't get to see it happen. I was at work. But I always wish an incoming president well and withhold judgment until he has taken office and actually done something. I always hope the president succeeds, whether I voted for him or not. His success is my success.

And I really haven't had much of an opportunity to watch the highlights. I was at my part–time job this evening, just got home a short while ago, and I have seen a few highlights although probably not enough to get a true feeling for what the experience was like.

But I feel strangely optimistic tonight. It's an odd sensation for me because I really haven't felt that way much for many years now.

I lost my job around the time of the economic implosion in the fall of 2008. Technically, my job was a casualty of the George W. Bush era, but he was only president for a few months at the beginning of my period of unemployment. For more than 5½ years of the Barack Obama presidency, the best I could get was part–time work, and I struggled to make ends meet.

It was a bleak time in my life, and it was a time when I felt abandoned — by my government, by my church, by many of my friends, even by my family.

It was fashionable in the Obama years to say that the economy he inherited was the worst since the Great Depression. That, of course, was so devastating that Franklin D. Roosevelt felt it was necessary to create a New Deal for Americans. That was his mission in 1933 — to revive the American economy, to put America back to work.

It seemed to me in 2008 — and it still seems to me — that, in the worst economy since the Great Depression, it was Barack Obama's mission to forge a new New Deal — to make putting America back to work his top priority. Was there anything in his way? Democrats like to say that Republicans obstructed Obama's agenda, but that conveniently ignores the fact that they controlled both chambers of Congress in 2009 and 2010. They even had a "filibuster–proof majority" in the Senate.

Obama could have done something about the unemployment crisis, but he did not.

Instead he focused his political capital on the nomination of an Hispanic woman to the Supreme Court (a nomination that was never in doubt), a beer summit with a white police officer and a black college professor and the so–called Affordable Care Act.

That's when he lost me. Instead of helping Americans get their financial lives back on course, he came up with something that Americans could be compelled to buy with money they didn't have — and they could be punished financially if they failed to buy it. Is there a more draconian arrangement in American life?

Now the health insurance policy that I am obliged by law to buy costs me nearly $750 per month. That's a 54% increase over what I was paying each month in 2016. My rent just went up, too, by about $50 per month. That means I'm paying $300 more per month for those two things alone.

I just got a raise, which helps, but it's only $100 more per month. So I'm still $200 in the hole.

I can't afford it.

When I hear a president talking about remembering the forgotten, he's singing my song.

It may turn out to be more political hooey, but I'm hopeful, on this night, that it is not.

Inaugural Day 2013

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According to the 20th Amendment, today is the day the president takes the oath of office.

And Barack Obama did take that oath today. But he did so in private.

I suppose that is a fitting metaphor for a president who prefers to bypass the constitutionally prescribed system of checks and balances, but this is done with the blessing of American tradition, if not the Constituton itself.

The 20th Amendment, which was ratified 80 years ago this Wednesday, changed Inauguration Day from March 4 to Jan. 20. That was a necessary change. When the country was founded a couple of centuries ago, it made sense to have the inauguration in March. It was likely that a newly elected president would need all that time to tie up any loose ends in his private life and then travel to Washington to begin his presidency.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, the trip to Washington could be long and arduous for a president—elect. But in the 20th century, with the train and the automobile already established as means of transportation and the airplane emerging as one, it wasn't necessary to wait an additional six weeks for the new president to take office.

Especially if the new president was taking office during an economic or international crisis.

The 20th Amendment doesn't mention anything about what is to be done when Inaugural Day falls on a Sunday. I presume that is a tradition dating to the 18th century that continues today.

And, although I consider myself well–versed in American history and traditions, that was a tradition of which I was unaware until 1985. That was the first time in my lifetime that Inaugural Day fell on a Sunday.

Ronald Reagan had been re–elected a couple of months earlier so he took the oath of office for the second time. Nevertheless, I began thinking of how awkward it could be for an outgoing president to have to watch an incoming president take the oath of office twice.

After all, the outgoing president must be on hand for the transfer of power — if at all possible. If the outgoing president is leaving because he has served his two terms, that is one thing, but if the outgoing president was defeated in the most recent election, that is another.

The outgoing president must greet the incoming president at the White House and then ride with him to the Capitol for the public ceremony. It's a short ride up Pennsylvania Avenue, but it could seem interminable if the two are still angry at each other over things that were said during the campaign.

And, for an outgoing president who has been rejected at the polls, it may seem like cruel and unusual punishment to have to stand by and watch his successor take the oath twice.

I don't know if that has ever happened. This is only the third time since the ratification of the 20th Amendment that Inaugural Day has fallen on a Sunday. Each time, the president being sworn in was the incumbent who had been re–elected a couple of months earlier.

If that tradition of a private ceremony on Sunday and a public one on Monday was being observed prior to the ratification of the 20th Amendment, the last time that March 4 fell on a Sunday was in 1917 — when Woodrow Wilson was taking the oath of office for the second time.

I suppose I began thinking about this in 1985 because I had been a supporter of Reagan's opponent in the 1984 election, former Vice President Walter Mondale (who lost in a 49–state landslide).

Maybe I was indulging in a little wishful thinking. It's not as if Mondale was ever really in that race.

But Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney, was in the 2012 race. Some people think he had the momentum until Superstorm Sandy halted it in the final week of the campaign.

If Sandy had not been a late factor in the race, Romney might have won the election.

And, today, Obama would have been forced to stand by while Romney took the oath of office — and then he would have been forced to do so again tomorrow.

Obama was spared that, however. Time will tell if that was a blessing — or a curse.

The Exception to the Rule

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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."

Inauguration Day

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For more than half of its existence, the United States observed Inauguration Day on March 4.

Of course, any day could be the day a president is inaugurated, due to death or resignation. But I'm talking about those regularly scheduled, once–every–four–years events when a president–elect is sworn in.

With the exception of those occasions when March 4 fell on a Sunday, presidents–elect took the oath of office on March 4 from the day George Washington took the oath for the second time until Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath for the first time.

In Washington's time — and, through the 19th century into the 20th century — it made sense to swear in a new president in March. After doing whatever needed to be done to get his personal and business dealings squared away, a president–elect might have to travel a long distance to get to the nation's capital in the days when air travel didn't exist and rail travel was still developing.

But, by FDR's day, travel was not as formidable, and I guess it didn't make much sense to delay the implementation of the will of the people until the third month of the next calendar year.

The date for presidential inaugurations was changed by the 20th Amendment, which was ratified by the required number of states on Jan. 23, 1933. Because of the provision of Section 5 ("Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article"), it did not apply to the president who was elected in 1932. Instead, it affected the start of the next presidential term.

For a long time, I thought that the 20th Amendment was proposed and ratified because of the presidency of Herbert Hoover, during which the stock market crashed and the Great Depression began. But the older I got — and the more I researched that possibility — the more unlikely it seemed. The 20th Amendment was proposed in 1932, when Congress was equally divided between Hoover's Republicans and the opposition Democrats. Both parties have changed a lot in the 77 years since the amendment was ratified, but my guess is that lawmakers felt the same sense of loyalty to presidents of their own party that they do today.

It is certainly possible that the Democrats of that time were motivated by the Hoover experience to move up the inauguration date, but Republicans may have had different reasons. That doesn't mean they wouldn't have been glad to be free of what many must have perceived — if privately — was political dead weight, but, while Democrats may have mentioned Hoover (and the likelihood that he would be replaced by the voters) frequently when discussing the proposed amendment, my guess is that the Republicans did not pile on.

The current inauguration date — January 20 — is more than six weeks earlier than March 4, but that hasn't always been enough for some people who were eager to get past the transition. Less than three weeks after Barack Obama's election in November 2008, Gail Collins proposed, in the New York Times, that George W. Bush step down and let the Democrats take over early.

Collins had it all worked out. Of course, there were certain obstacles to get around. It would have required Dick Cheney to agree to resign as well, and it would have required Nancy Pelosi, as the third in line, to agree to give up the House speakership to become president for a couple of months (although it might have been, under those circumstances, more appropriate to consider her a "shadow president," since, in Collins' scenario, Pelosi seems to have been more of a conduit for imposing Obama's will earlier than the natural course of the law would allow, not really a president in the traditional sense of the word). And there might have been some other constitutional issues that would have been raised by such an unprecedented act.

Collins may have been writing with her tongue firmly against her cheek, but she asserted that stepping down would be a patriotic act for Bush. I'm not sure if Bush or any other high–profile Republicans felt the same way. And, obviously, it never came to pass, but, even if it had, I don't think the starting date of the next presidential term would have been altered.

Clearly there are some people who are still living who were alive on that March day in 1933 when FDR took the oath for the first time. There are even some people who are old enough to remember that day. But even those who don't remember it have heard the most famous line delivered in FDR's inaugural address that day:

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"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."

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That was an important thing to say to Americans in the 1930s, when one–fourth of the population was out of work. Americans in the 21st century think these times are hard — and they are — but this is practically a walk on the beach compared to what Americans faced in 1933.

Even so, wouldn't it be nice — even reassuring — to have a president who told us that we had nothing to fear but fear itself — today of all days?

Today's History Lesson

It is fashionable, these days, to regard Barack Obama as the first person of non-European ancestry to hold the highest office in the land.

That is true, but he wasn't really the first non-European to scale such heights.

Eighty years ago today, Charles Curtis, who was the vice president under Herbert Hoover, became the first non-European to hold either of the two highest offices in the executive branch of the federal government.

Most of his ancestors on his mother's side were Native Americans, and Curtis, who was 3/8th American Indian, spent much of his childhood with his maternal grandparents on the Kaw reservation in what is now Kansas. In fact, before becoming vice president in his late 60s, Curtis served as a congressman, then as a senator, from Kansas.

In an interesting side note to the story, Curtis was the last president or vice president to have facial hair.

And here is a point that should be of interest to those who are fascinated by technology.

On this date in 1925, Hoover's predecessor, Calvin Coolidge, became the first president whose inauguration was broadcast on radio.

It was not the first time Coolidge took the oath of office. He became president in 1923, following the death of Warren Harding. But it was the first — and only — time he gave an inaugural address.

"Silent Cal," as he was known, wasn't particularly silent on that occasion. His inaugural address ran for more than 4,000 words. After winning nearly every state outside the South in a three-way race, as well as presiding over a booming economy, Coolidge undoubtedly felt compelled to speak more than he usually did.

"No one can contemplate current conditions without finding much that is satisfying and still more that is encouraging," Coolidge said.

Coolidge was greatly admired by Ronald Reagan, but he typically falls in the middle of scholars' presidential rankings, largely because there is disagreement among historians over whether his approach to the economy was wise. Some believe in his reduction of government's role as the best way to do things while others advocate more regulation.

Historic Day

January 20 has been Inauguration Day for more than 70 years. Technically, I suppose, it's been an historic day whenever a president has taken the oath of office, whoever the president was, even if the president was taking that oath for the second time (or, in the case of Franklin D. Roosevelt, for the third and fourth times).

But rarely in my lifetime has it been truly historic — in the sense of being a break with the past.

In just a few hours, it will be an historic moment when Barack Obama puts his left hand on the Bible that Abraham Lincoln used to take the oath of office more than a century ago and takes that same oath, becoming the first black president.

I suppose the only comparable moment in my lifetime was 48 years ago when John F. Kennedy took the oath of office, becoming the first (and so far only) Catholic president (although it is worth noting today that the next vice president, Joe Biden, also is Catholic). I wasn't old enough to remember that event.

But I will remember today's inauguration. Come hell or high water, whether this presidency is ultimately judged to be a success or failure, I will remember today's events.

The inauguration of President Obama will mean different things to different people. But, on this day, my thoughts are drawn to the memory of my mother, who died in 1995.

As a young woman, she and my father were Methodist missionaries in Africa for five years. It was during that time that I was born.

When the three of us came back to the United States, my father took a teaching position in central Arkansas, and my mother became an activist in our community. Her experience in Africa taught her important lessons about human relations and racial justice, lessons that she applied to her efforts in Arkansas.

Yesterday, the nation paused to remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. For the first time on that holiday, I thought about the night in April 1968 when Dr. King was killed. (In case you didn't realize it, it was on January 20 in 1986 that the nation first observed Martin Luther King Day.)

I don't know where my father was that evening. Perhaps he was at a faculty meeting. Perhaps he was teaching a class. Nor do I know where my brother was that night. He was 5 years old at the time. Maybe he was at a friend's house.

But my mother and I were the only ones in our house. Our telephone rang, my mother answered it, and her face went ashen as she listened to the person on the other end of the line.

After she hung up the phone, my mother tried to explain to me, in terms an 8-year-old could understand, what had happened. In a choked voice, she told me that someone she admired and respected had been killed. My mother rarely cried in front of me. But on that occasion, I saw tears running down her cheeks.

Not many, because, as I say, she was not given to that kind of thing in front of her children. But there were enough that I could tell that she was very moved by what had happened. I did not know who King was. I did not know whether my mother was acquainted with the person who had been killed. But I tried to comfort her in my 8-year-old way.

I've always felt that my mother believed that more than a man died that evening. In many ways, I believe that she was convinced that the cause of justice in America had been set back, that some of the things she believed should be might never come to pass.

But that dream did not die in April 1968.

Today, more than 40 years after that evening and nearly 14 years after my mother's death, the dream lives in a way that I wonder if Mom could have imagined. Millions of people will be in Washington today to bear witness to it, and hundreds of millions more will watch it on TV.

Last March, when Texas was about to hold its presidential primaries, I asked my father whether he thought my mother would have voted for Obama or Hillary Clinton. He said he believed she would have voted for Obama. That's certainly possible, considering the years she spent with my father in Africa, but I wasn't so sure then, and I'm still not sure about that. Mom was against racism, but she was also an advocate of education, children, women, single parents and health care, all things that are important to Clinton. I could see her supporting either candidate.

As I told some friends of mine during the recent Christmas holiday, I think Mom probably would have seen it as a race between two qualified candidates (I don't know if she ever felt that way about the electoral choices she had in her life) and that the only regrettable thing was that only one could be nominated. Since Clinton appears to be on her way to becoming the next secretary of state, I think Mom would have been gratified that both will go on to greater service to the nation.

I don't know if there is a heaven, if there is an afterlife. If there is, I'm sure she will be looking down on the scene today and smiling her extraordinary smile — although I'm equally certain that she would say there is still much that needs to be done.

But that's OK. America has always been a work in progress. I think one of the things my mother wanted to teach my brother and me was that America was meant to constantly reinvent itself, to never be satisfied with the status quo, to always seek ways to improve.

As Frederick Douglass said, "If there is no struggle, there is no progress."

So let's get on with the work that remains. It seems to me that we've struggled enough.