The Purpose of the Inaugural Ritual

The inaugural address is an "antidote to the dangers of amnesia," says the author of The First Inauguration.

Review of:ย The First Inauguration: George Washington and the Invention of the Republicย by Stephen Howard Browne, (Penn State University Press, 2020).

On April 30, 1789, General George Washington took his oath of office in New York City and delivered the first-ever US presidential inaugural address. Subsequent reviews have been mixed. A bit more than a century later, the 23rd US President, Benjamin Harrison, observed (with tongue ever so slightly in cheek) that presidential inaugurals generally are usually โ€œof a popular characterโ€ and, โ€œin ordinary times,โ€ not โ€œvery importantโ€ as far as official statements go. Perhaps this was Harrisonโ€™s oblique way of giving thanks for Washingtonโ€™s initial foray into the genre of presidential inaugural address, in that it did not set the bar very high for his successors. 

As we await the next American president’s inaugural address, it’s an opportune moment to page through The First Inauguration, authored by rhetorical critic Stephen Howard Browne. Browne’s book provides us with an in-depth examination of Washingtonโ€™s first inaugural. At nearly 300 pages, this is a substantive, well-researched but also accessible work, written in an engaging style with constant emphasis on telling details that enliven what could otherwise be a dull procession of facts and dates. 

Browneโ€™s fundamental argument is that Washingtonโ€™s inaugural remarks have not received the recognition they deserve. His 1789 speech at Federal Hall ought more properly to be appreciated, Browne writes, as โ€œa commanding statement on what the American presidency ought to look and sound like [and a model example of what] a republican government ought to sound like, what it expects of its people, and of what the people ought to expect of it.โ€

For the first two thirds of the book, with Browne capably narrating, readers figuratively ride alongside Washington as he makes the long journey from his home in Virginia to his presidential inauguration in New York. While Browne develops an insightful portrait of Washington as a man and commander for us, he also leads us to understand the complex interconnected issues that the โ€œFather of His Countryโ€ would need to speak to in his first formal remarks as chief executive. The most pressing of these: the gnawing question of how a newly-united group of thirteen former colonies, โ€œperched on the far edge of the Atlantic,โ€ as Brown puts it, and freed from British imperial misrule, could reliably sustain itself as an independent political unit.

We next stand at Washingtonโ€™s side as he delivers his inaugural address, with Browne taking us sentence by sentence through the key pointsโ€”such the its open avowal by Washington that โ€œthe destinyโ€ of the new US government, and the outcome of the โ€œexperimentโ€ it represented, ultimately rested in โ€œthe hands of the American people.โ€ 

The last 100 or so pages of First Inauguration take readers on a further journey through time and space, as Browne shows how four of Washingtonโ€™s successors commemorated his inaugural, highlighting the contributions these and other such rituals can make to the unity of the US as a political community. 

So that there is no confusion on this pointโ€”Browne is not calling for blind worship of Washington, either in the conduct of his life or his legacy as a leader, speaker or thinker. Browneโ€™s point is that rituals and ceremonies, such as re-enacting the first Presidentโ€™s arrival in New York, function as the rhetorical equivalent of an โ€œantidote to the dangers of amnesia, political and otherwise.โ€ Such rituals provide โ€œshape, meaning, and directionโ€ to communities, especially during moments of change. It is precisely at such times that rituals, by summoning up memory, Browne notes, can โ€œhelp us over the thresholds, give us a hand, so to speak, [and the] courage to leave behind what must be left behind, and brace us for the coming time.โ€

Browneโ€™s observations about political amnesia recalled for this reviewer the final moments of the 1976 made-for-TV historical drama The Adams Chronicles. Timed with that yearโ€™s US bicentennial celebration, this superbly-produced mini-series covers American history from the War of Independence to the late 1800s, by re-enacting key moments in the lives of John Adams, 2nd US President, and several generations of his descendants. The closing narration accompanying the end of the last episode runs as follows:

Six generations [after the American founding]โ€ฆour institutions seem no closer to solving the great questions of human conductโ€”especially human conduct in positions of power. History may be our best guide. The methods employed, the success or failure of those methods, the frustrations and triumphs of [our predecessors] show us the past, face to face. Now, the play belongs to us. In this act, we are all the players.

The George Washington we meet in Browneโ€™s book, were he to hear this, might frown and ask, in his soft-spoken and restrained way: โ€œIn my first inaugural speech, was I not clear that the final success of our American โ€˜playโ€™ has always rested in the hands of the people…?โ€

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