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. It was 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.
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