President Clinton's 1993 Inaugural Address

According to press reports, President Bill Clinton drafted his own 1993 inaugural address, with some help from his staff.(1) If these reports are true, what did the speech tell us about him? It probably uncovers little about his innermost feelings, because an inaugural address is a contrived effort at image-building, not a spontaneous exercise in soul-baring. In its own way, however, this contrivance can reveal a good deal. It supplies a case study of how this president used his intellectual resources at the beginning of his first term to serve his political purposes. Clinton's mental toolbox holds an impressive stock: in some years, he has purportedly read as many as three hundred books. Even if he exaggerates on this point, no one can doubt that he reads and retains an enormous volume of material. According to former chief of staff Betsy Wright: reading is part of a lifelong quest for knowledge. He gains it from books and people. He never stops.(2) In January 1993, he used this store of knowledge for a hard task. He had campaigned on the theme of change, and people expected him to deliver. His meager plurality posed an obstacle: with only 43 percent of the vote, he outpolled the winning House candidate in only five districts.(3) Lacking a mandate of votes, he had to create one of words. inaugural address gave him an unparalleled chance to define the situation to his advantage. He sought to show that the nation was undergoing inevitable change, and that his leadership could ensure that this change would prove beneficial.(4) As Barbara Hinckley has noted, however, inaugural addresses promise continuity as well as change.(5) Clinton had good reason to follow this practice. He had never held national office, and his opponents had raised doubts about his readiness. He thus had to make people see the Clintonian change as neither helter-skelter nor abrupt, but natural and orderly. He had to appear not as a slick salesman of dubious nostrums but as a worthy heir to great leaders of the past. Where did President Clinton find the words to strike this balance? Except in cases of direct quotation, one cannot answer such a question with absolute certainty. Presidents do not footnote their speeches; and even if they did, the citations would provide only part of the picture, as writers themselves seldom remember the origins of the phrases that they make their own. Nevertheless, we can attempt some reasoned inferences, especially when we know what the writer has studied thoroughly or read recently. In this case, the evidence suggests that he drew heavily upon three sources: his lifelong study of the Bible; his education at Georgetown University; and his reading of the inaugural addresses of Republican and Democratic presidents. From the Bible Compared with Europeans, people in the United States have always had an unusual depth of piety. The religious atmosphere of the country was the first thing that struck me on arrival in the United States, recalled Tocqueville. The longer I stayed in the country, the more conscious I was of the important political consequences resulting from this novel situation.(6) American orators have often used the language of religion, a tradition that is not explicitly sectarian but instead emphasizes the collective and individual obligation to carry out God's will on Earth.(7) Inaugural addresses have often served as liturgies of the civil religion.(8) Except for Washington's perfunctory second inaugural, all such speeches have mentioned God. In inaugural addresses from Truman's to Reagan's, references to religion outnumbered references to political parties by a ratio of fourteen to one.(9) Clinton was well-prepared to carry on this tradition. He grew up in the Southern Baptist denomination, which stresses Scripture in its worship services and encourages Bible reading in the home. When he was a child, Clinton recalled during the campaign, he felt a strong need for church even though his parents did not go. …