Joe Biden’s Inauguration, just days away, takes place at a moment of upheaval, violence, and profound division. Even as the nation continues to absorb an unprecedented attack on our democracy, we look to a new Administration to propose a different course.
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This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces on Presidential Inaugurations and Inaugural Addresses. In “Ask Not, Tell Not,” Louis Menand writes about the story behind John F. Kennedy’s influential and inspiring address at his Inauguration, in 1961. In “Can Biden’s Center Hold?,” Evan Osnos examines whether Biden will be able to unite a fractured nation. In “A Dark Inaugural,” Benjamin Wallace-Wells explores the stark, divisive rhetoric of Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address, in 2017. (“There were no nods to ‘the sacrifices borne by our ancestors,’ which Obama spoke of in his first Inaugural Address, or to America’s values, or to its spirit.”) In “The Speech,” Jill Lepore chronicles the evolution of inaugural speeches throughout American history. Finally, in “A Poet’s Tale from Obama’s First Inaugural,” Elizabeth Alexander reflects on her experience delivering the verse she composed for Barack Obama’s first Inauguration: “I read my poem, feeling American poets alive and dead by my side, feeling myself as representative in the most grave and beautiful way.” We hope that this, too, is an auspicious moment.
—David Remnick
The story behind Kennedy’s famous Inaugural Address.
After a career built on incremental progress, Joe Biden is promising a Presidency of transformational change.
Amid displays of continuity at his Inauguration, the new President insisted on a break with the past.
Have Inaugural Addresses been getting worse?
I held the word “freedom” inside me as I waited to read.
