Presidential inaugurations are by definition historic acts, but when we think of past Inauguration Days there is clearly a hierarchy of historical pop.
Who could forget John F. Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" in 1961. Or Ronald Reagan 20 years later relocating the ceremony for the first time from the East Front of the U.S. Capitol to the magnificent West Front facing the National Mall and the Washington Monument? Or the surprise of seeing the grand stage and spectacle reduced to the indoor space of the Capitol Rotunda in 1985 due to severe cold? The latter scene will have a reprise on Monday as plunging temperatures have moved the second Trump inaugural ceremony indoors.
As a rule, the biggest splash has been made by the newly elected presidents coming to the office for the first time, especially those elected in opposition to the party previously in control of the White House. These have drawn the largest crowds and inspired the most breathless anticipation.
The atmosphere itself seems to ask: How will things be different now in Washington, in the country at large and in the wider world? Such questions do not accompany the reelected incumbents, no matter how gratifying reelection and the continuation in power may be at the time. The thrill of Day 1 has rarely been as great the second time around.
Two transformative inaugurals
We have seen this transformative kind of Inauguration Day twice in recent years, with Barack Obama in 2009 and then with Donald Trump in 2017. Both were considered unlikely winners of their respective parties' nominations. Both had overcome those odds on the strength of things they had done far from Washington and its measures of importance.
And so their inaugurations spoke of dramatic departures, even as they acted out the day's rituals and touched all the traditional bases. The movements Obama and Trump inspired were quite distinct. Obama's was later dubbed "the coalition of the ascendant," an amalgam of younger voters, women and people of color. While these categories had leaned Democratic for several cycles, they came out in force for Obama and easily overcame the margin by which the Republican ticket still carried the white vote.
Trump's movement had its own demographics, somewhat at odds with Obama's, but it clearly revived the idea of populism as a force. In its earlier eras of prominence, the term had belonged to rebellious farmers and workers who felt Wall Street and the wealthy had locked them out. Trump's voters shared a more political sense of grievance, a conviction that they had been sidelined, if not outright ignored, by recent presidents of both parties. They understood what Trump meant when he called the nation's industrial base "American carnage" and knew he was talking about jobs and immigration and looming social change.
Different as they were, the Obama and Trump messages each met their respective moments. And the people — or at least many of the people — responded in numbers that overwhelmed previous notions of Inauguration Day turnout.
Obama drew a crowd that stretched from the Capitol grounds to the Washington Monument and beyond. While officials have stopped estimating crowd sizes, various fact-checking organizations have said Obama's 2009 crowd was nearly double the size of his 2013 crowd, which still appeared somewhat larger than Trump's 2017 gathering. Trump famously disputed this and gave various estimates roughly twice as high as most fact-checkers reported.
But the larger point was that both candidates drew outsized crowds energized by many who had perhaps never thought of attending an inauguration before. In that sense they were like the streams of frontier folk who trekked muddy roads to Washington in the late winter of 1829, intent on celebrating their hero Andrew Jackson and crowding into the White House to do so. That too was a surge of populism, long before the term was in use.
Jackson's first inaugural celebration has its place in history, along with a few others from the nation's first century. American schoolchildren learn about George Washington taking the oath in Federal Hall in New York back before the designated capital of Washington existed. Many memorize portions of Abraham Lincoln's first or second inaugural addresses, delivered from a stage built on the steps of the U.S. Capitol's East Front steps. Lincoln seemed to be holding off the Civil War with such phrases as "mystic chords of memory" and "better angels of our natures;" and then seeking to "bind up the nation's wounds," in his second inaugural "with malice toward none, with charity for all."
Dramatic addresses and developments
Few addresses could rival the tragic tale of William Henry Harrison.
"Tippecanoe" Harrison was elected the 9th president of the U.S. in 1840 but ran into exceptionally foul weather on his Inauguration Day. Ill but persevering, he delivered a lengthy speech hatless and coatless, went home to bed and died there a few weeks later.
But most Inauguration Days have been far more auspicious than Harrison's, and some have marked turning points in the nation's sense of itself. Far from being ceremonies only, they foretold much of what the new presidency would mean.
The template for this in the 20th century was Franklin D. Roosevelt's first taking of the oath in 1933. He had already promised the American people "a new deal" in a campaign speech the previous summer. But it was on the day of his first inaugural that he broadcast the motto: "We have nothing to fear but fear itself."
The previous four years had seen the national economy plunge into what has been known since as The Great Depression. Roosevelt, a Democrat, won in a sweeping landslide over the incumbent Republican Herbert Hoover and carried in powerful majorities in the House and Senate – tall talk for someone who had never been elected outside New York before, but the phrases would define the spirit of the era.
One two-term president in recent decades actually may have had a more celebratory second inaugural event than his first. George W. Bush, who had been the Republican governor of Texas, lost the popular vote in 2000 to the Democratic Vice President Al Gore. But Bush prevailed by a narrow margin in the Electoral College because the Supreme Court in effect awarded him the electoral votes of Florida by calling off a weeks-long effort to recount the vote there. Bush was declared the winner in Florida by exactly 537 votes out of 5.8 million cast. Much of the country was still absorbing the shock of the events in Florida and the courts when Inauguration Day arrived.
At least partly as a consequence of that, and the 5-4 decision in the high court, Bush's first inauguration in January 2001 brought out an unusually large contingent of vocal and visible protestors. But four years later, after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 had driven the president's approval rating to record highs and fueled a win in the popular vote as well as the Electoral College, the atmosphere was more restrained. Because protests were expected, unusual numbers of law enforcement officers and National Guard troops worked the parade route in the afternoon and Bush and first lady Laura Bush got out of their bulletproof limousine to walk part of the route.
Testing and renewing traditions
That was a move introduced to the modern era by the 39th president, Jimmy Carter, who wanted to eschew the limo ride and walk the route at least in large part from the Capitol to the White House. He and his wife Rosalynn did that in 1977, a story that was often retold at Carter's funeral and in other remembrances earlier this month. Carter died Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
Another president who renewed the get-out-and-walk tradition was Bill Clinton, who did it in 1993 when celebrating his first Inaugural Day. Clinton also revived the inclusion of an Inauguration Poem, inviting Maya Angelou to present her work "On the Pulse of Morning." Kennedy had initiated the feature by asking Robert Frost to read in 1961. Joe Biden refreshed the memory in 2021 when he asked 22-year-old Amanda Gorman to read her "The Hill We Climb."
Yet another tradition sure to be discussed during this year's observations is the raising of private money to pay for Inauguration Day activities beyond the basics of the swearing in. These include the balls that are sponsored by the president-elect's inauguration committee and by states and others. Debate over the influence donors might be purchasing with such participation reached a new high in 1981 when Reagan's committee raised a reported $19 million.
This year's committee, featuring million-dollar donations from tech giants Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, is expected to raise $200 million. The trio will attend the inauguration ceremony on Monday.
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