By GINNIE GRAHAM News Columnist on Jan 21, 2013, at 8:00 AM Updated on 1/20 at 10:50 PM
GINNIE GRAHAM
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As President Obama takes the oath today to start his second term, I feel like a spectator at a person‘s second wedding.
It’s the same with all the second inauguration ceremonies.
For the first win, it’s understandable to want the parades, balls and celebrity singers.
A bride wants to have the showers and wear white, at least the first time.
After that, it just seems a little much to ask it again.
Do we really need the pomp-and-circumstance for incumbent presidents?
These are mostly to allow the party faithful to party.
The only real news is what they say in their speeches.
President Lincoln’s greatest address was at his second inauguration, which was a month before his assassination.
Slavery and the Civil War were near their ends, but Lincoln did not boast or rejoice.
He spoke philosophically of why the war happened, questioning the role of Divine providence and placing Biblical passages and allusions to further his points.
Lincoln pondered if God's punishment for the sins of slavery led to death and destruction of war.
Among the brilliant and most-quoted prose:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
The speech is inscribed on the Lincoln Memorial alongside with the Gettysburg Address.
Lincoln would probably have found a way to make these comments with or without the inaugural ceremonies.
It laid the foundation for Reconstruction.
No other second inaugural address comes close or rates high among the historically interesting speeches.
At least some of the first inaugural speeches gave great lines like "Ask not what your country can do, but what you can do for your country," President Kennedy.
President Washington gave the shortest inaugural speech, which was after his second swearing-in, at 135 words.
I doubt President Clinton could order dinner with that few a words.
Maybe President Franklin D. Roosevelt got tired of being the bride.
His fourth inaugural address was the second-shortest of all presidents at 559 words.
With the U.S. in the grip of World War II, Roosevelt cancelled all parties.
He only held the job for three months before he died, ushering in the Harry S Truman presidency.
Truman’s first inauguration was in a room at the White House with a few witnesses.
But, on his second inauguration - his first full term - he brought back the tradition of the an official inaugural ball, which had been gone since President Warren G. Harding.
Truman gave federal employees a holiday to watch the inauguration, and celebrations lasted a week.
And with that, the party had just begun.
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