Inaugural Moments

What matters ceremony? Americans have historically been somewhat schizophrenic about the subject. On the one hand, ceremony implies elitist ritual more associated with aristocracy or monarchy than democracy. On the other, we seem to turn out (or tune in) in record numbers every time a ceremony promises to be a moment of history (whatever that may mean).

So now may be a good time for reflection about what the ceremony of the inaugural is really about. Here I am speaking not so much about the speech (Jill Lepore did a wonderful job of telling the history of inaugural addresses in the New Yorker), but the ceremonies that surround the inaugural address. And no, these are not unimportant trappings to dress up an otherwise simple act of oath-taking and office assumption. Ceremonial conferring of power is important for the signals they deliver and the codes which contain them, and have always been so even in our fiercely republican America.

John Adams, for instance, showed up to his inauguration in a suit of fine pearl gray broadcloth, complete with a cockaded hat and a sword. As if to answer such aristocratic pretensions (Adams was, after all, the one who wished the President's title to be "His Excellency"), Thomas Jefferson walked to his inaugural in clothes that, according to several onlookers, barely distinguished him from the militia troops assembled nearby. This was not poor planning on Jefferson's part--no one can imagine that he awoke on that day of all days and had nothing nice in the closet to wear. It was a self-conscious democratic pretention on Jefferson's part, just as much as was his walk to the Capitol (Adams, after all, arrived by carriage).

If Jefferson repudiated Adams (and Federalist aristocratic pretensions), then he found himself snubbed in turn. John Marshall, newly appointed chief justice, delivered the oath of office upon Jefferson's request. But he turned his back on Jefferson during the address, an action not soon forgotten by angry Democratic-Republicans. Marshall would not make another such snub until the election of 1828, when he famously ended his political neutrality as chief justice by casting a ballot in the presidential election of that year--not so much for John Quincy Adams as against Andrew Jackson. Jackson's victory in the election led to another fantastic inaugural memory: his famous reception party at the White House where he symbolically invited in "the people." They came, and they looted the place. Jackson barely escaped being crushed alive before assuming the duties of office.

These ceremonial moments were all consciously planned. Jefferson, Marshall, and Jackson understood the importance of ceremony and meant to send certain signals to political friends and enemies alike. They may have been able to be more spontaneous--no secret service detail in those days--but they nonetheless crafted their ceremonies understanding what signals they were sending. And of course, such spontaneity is even more a mirage today. Can anyone doubt that Jimmy Carter's "spontaneous" exit from the limousine and walk to the White House comported nicely with his desire to be seen as a "people's president"?

Not that spontaneity could not intrude. There was nothing planned about James Buchanan's (1857-1861) frequent trips to the bathroom that interrupted his inaugural address. Buchanan had contracted "Hotel Dysentery" as it was called. Nor was there anything planned about the riot at George W. Bush's 2001 inauguration that sent the limos in high speed from the Capitol to the White House. With hindsight, both of these moments seem eerily prophetic. Buchanan, after all, began his presidency by exulting the decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), widely reviled as the worst U.S. Supreme Court decision ever, and ended by whistling through the graveyard as state after state seceded from the Union. Such blunders seem foretold in an inaugural address more marked by the deliverer's acute diarrhea than his stunning oratory. And the riot that kicked off Bush II's presidency presaged the conditions of his exit: hugely unpopular with the people, out of touch with reality, and divisive (not decisive) in a crisis.

There was some of the spontaneous in the Obama inauguration as well. Chief Justice John G. Roberts and President Obama both flubbed the simplest part--the oath of office. That these two men, renown constitutional officers and scholars in their own right, known for their elocution and their intelligence, could make so simple a mistake is--in its own right--astounding. One hopes that it is not a bit of prophesy as well.