Commentary

DANA D. KELLEY: Augury of January

Ancient Romans lent us many things, including the root word for today's constitutional ceremony.

Augurs were priests in classical Rome who divined the gods' will regarding matters of state from observing birds. Over the course of a couple of millennia, the Latin verb for augury eventually hatched the term we still use to describe a formal induction to an office.

Inauguration Day signifies transition to the future, but also summons recollections from the past. Among the 57 inaugural addresses given by U.S. presidents since 1789, to which Donald Trump will add his own, are some of the nation's most famous quotes.

"We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," Thomas Jefferson said, fresh from the narrowest of victories and invoking unity in his first inaugural in 1801.

Lincoln's second address in 1865 gave us the stirring lines, "With malice toward none, with charity for all ..."

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," Franklin Roosevelt assured Depression-wreaked Americans in 1933 in his first inaugural.

"Ask not what your country can do for you," John F. Kennedy challenged our budding entitlement mentality in 1963.

Kennedy's ceremony also inaugurated a poetic feature, and none was more eminently qualified than four-time Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Frost. Jan. 20, 1961, was cold and windy in Washington, a sunny day with snow on the ground. Frost had penned a poem especially for the occasion, appropriately titled "Dedication."

But between the glare blinding his eyes and the gusts flapping the text in his hands, he couldn't read his new poem.

He was thus forced to abandon the road less traveled, and instead recited a poem from memory: "The Gift Outright." The sonnet's opening sentence--"The land was ours before we were the land's"--introduces its storyline of America and Americans' destiny as a free people.

Many would have known the poem in 1961; it had been published 20 years earlier and was part of the collection for which he received his fourth Pulitzer.

A few of the unread lines from "Dedication," following another tight and unpredictable presidential contest, are worth recalling.

"Come fresh from an election

like the last,

The greatest vote a people ever cast,

So close yet sure to be abided by,

It is no miracle our mood is high.

Courage is in the air

in bracing whiffs

Better than all the stalemate

an's and ifs.

There was the book

of profile tales declaring

For the emboldened politicians

daring

To break with followers

when in the wrong,

A healthy independence

of the throng,

A democratic form of right divine

To rule first answerable

to high design.

There is a call to life a little sterner,

And braver for the earner, learner,

yearner."

Inaugural addresses are often part history, part bully pulpitry, part philosophy. Here's a name-that-president exercise--see if you can guess who stood before the nation on another Jan. 20 and delivered these words:

"In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another."

Reading through inaugural speeches from the past reminds us of several adages, including the one that starts out "The more things change ..."

The inaugural referenced above was Richard Nixon's first, and though nearly 50 years have transpired since, the content resonates as contemporary.

There is perhaps some salve in the constancy that punctuates political rivalries and rituals over the centuries. Take this timely example from another victorious presidential candidate:

"During the course of this administration, and in order to disturb it, the artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare."

It's a dated excerpt, obviously. No modern president would try to foist the word "licentiousness," used for its secondary meaning of disregard for conventions, on a modern audience. Still, it's somewhat reassuring to remember that as early as 1805, presidents as stately as Thomas Jefferson weren't above bashing the media.

Inaugural lore weaves an interesting tapestry as a backdrop for today's next chapter.

Ronald Reagan's two inaugurals hold both temperature records. His first was the warmest ever recorded (55 degrees) and his second the coldest (7 degrees).

William Harrison was the most long-winded president on Inauguration Day, and also the shortest-lived, dying of pneumonia only 31 days later.

The first president to be photographed on inauguration day was James Buchanan. The first to use loudspeakers at his inauguration was Warren Harding.

The first motion picture recording of an inauguration caught William McKinley on camera. Calvin Coolidge gave the first inaugural address broadcast on radio, and Harry Truman was the first broadcast on TV.

In an unimaginable stunt by today's standards, a cowboy on horseback during the inaugural parade of 1953 rode up to the grandstand and tossed a lasso around President Dwight Eisenhower.

The 58th Inauguration Day will make its own place in history. If you dare, look skyward, "take the auspices" and see what the flocks foretell.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.

Editorial on 01/20/2017

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