[Although I’m
writing this in early January, the current plan is for Donald
Trump to be inaugurated on Friday, January 20th as the 45th
President of the United States. While I’d like nothing more than to think not
at all of this impending event, that’s not the AmericanStudier way—so for this
special post I wanted to use two salient prior inaugurations to consider this
one. I’d love your thoughts, fears, hopes, or fervent prayers in comments,
please!]
1)
1865: I’ve written
before about how uncertain, and how vital, the 1864 presidental election was.
Abraham Lincoln’s victory in that election would seem to make his subsequent Second Inaugural Address,
delivered on March 4th, 1865, far less significant in contrast. Yet
even if we leave aside the speech’s aesthetic power (it’s usually put on par
with the Gettysburg Address as a
measure of Lincoln’s rhetorical gifts), I would argue that it nonetheless comprises
a vital historical moment all its own. The speech is largely remembered for the
magnanimous phrases and attitudes of its concluding paragraph, particularly the
opening clauses, “With malice toward none, with charity for all.” But I would
stress that those attitudes follow the long prior paragraph, in which Lincoln
engages at length with slavery, “the cause of the war” and such a historic
horror that, he argues, if the war were to continue for hundreds more years, “still
it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’’
It seems to me that we could use a lot more communal spirit derived from
engagement with, rather than ignorance of, dark historical realities here in
January 2017.
2)
2009: Barack Obama has been compared
to (or contrasted
with) Abraham Lincoln unceasingly over the
last 8 years, and I’m not trying to continue the tradition. Nor am I
suggesting that the national situation in January 2009 was as dark or
challenging as those faced by Lincoln, although I’d say it’s on the list of the
most difficult moments faced by a President-elect (as, to be sure, is our
current one). Instead, I’m highlighting Obama’s
first Inaugural Address on its own terms, both as a response to such a
challenging moment and (especially) for its uses of history both personal (“why
a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served in a local
restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath”) and national (“In
the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots
huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river”) in service of its
potent vision of America’s identity and future. I’d be lying if I said I
believed Donald Trump could summon up either of those forms of historical argument
successfully to help reframe our own troubled moment and uncertain future—but I’m
trying to remain an optimist.
3)
2017: So here we are. Not yet in a second Civil
War or next Great Recession, but in a moment that feels fraught with such horrific
possibilities. Inaugurating a president who is neither Lincoln nor Obama, but
who will nonetheless be at least as central to what happens next as they were. I’ve
written elsewhere about what we public scholars and Americans can do in
such a moment, and am not trying to minimize those roles in any way. But Donald
Trump will have a role to play as well, and no amount of either wishful
thinking nor of resistance will change that fact. Will that role be as
destructive as I fear? Is it possible that Trump can offer or become something
different from the worst version of ourselves he has represented throughout
this campaign? The inauguration will be only one moment in any case, but I want
to have some small hope that it might begin to reflect such alternatives,
linked to the best versions of our history and identity that we can find in
these prior inaugural moments. As with much, time will tell, and we AmericanStudiers
will be vigilant.
Next series
starts Monday,
Ben
PS. What do you
think?
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