Larry J. Sabato on INAUGURATIONS PAST AND PRESENT – How Will Obama Measure Up?
Rituals matter in any society, but in a democracy they are especially significant. Most authoritarian regimes are stable for long periods of time; the barrel of a gun ensures it. Democratic societies can change rapidly with public opinion, and a new administration is frequently the polar opposite of its predecessor.
How best to balance the need for change with the assurance of continuity? Ceremony. Of all our national rites of passage, none has more significance than the inauguration of a President. The simple oath of office, stretching back 220 years, links Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, and Founders in an unbroken line. Now there’s a security blanket for an anxious citizenry, especially those who didn’t vote for the new President.
We have added many pieces to the straightforward oath. Massive crowds, prayers and choirs, poems and salutations galore, 19-gun salutes and vast inaugural parades and balls–all of these are considered de rigueur for a new President. The tiniest ceremonial part can generate controversy, as we have just seen with Barack Obama’s selection of evangelical Christian preacher Rick Warren to deliver the invocation.
Americans expect to see the new and old Presidents together in a show of unity, however forced or phony. An unhappy, vanquished John Adams left town in the wee hours before his victorious successor, Thomas Jefferson, was sworn in on March 4, 1801. In the present day it would be considered very bad form for the outgoing Chief Executive to skip the incoming’s oath-taking. The two Presidents do not have to like one another and do not have to chat in the car from the White House to the Capitol on Inauguration Day. Herbert Hoover and FDR said barely a word in 1933 during their short journey, and neither did Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower in 1953. The image of harmony was what counted.