To honor Presidents Day, I went hunting for a presidential speech that I felt would really resonate with the times we’re in. I found several that I love — including, of course, Abraham Lincoln’s famous Second Inaugural — but there was one in particular that surprised me with its grace and elegance, and its faith in the power of American ideals to bring us together.
It sets the tone with the great character trait of humility:
“I am honored and humbled to stand here, where so many of America’s leaders have come before me, and so many will follow.”
It frames the American experience as a never-ending story that aspires to perfect itself:
“We have a place, all of us, in a long story — a story we continue, but whose end we will not see. It is the story of a new world that became a friend and liberator of the old, a story of a slave-holding society that became a servant of freedom, the story of a power that went into the world to protect but not possess, to defend but not to conquer.”
In the spirit of humility, the speech avoids the rhetoric of triuamphalism by reminding us that the American story is one of “flawed and fallible people.” At the same time, it reassures us that we are “united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals.”
In the spirit of humility, it avoids the rhetoric of triumphalism by reminding us that the American story is one of “flawed and fallible people.”
At the same time, it reassures us that we are “united across the generations by grand and enduring ideals.”
These enduring ideals have been the key to America’s success. If there’s one thing that troubles me about the recent efforts to reframe the American story as irredeemably racist and unjust (see, among other things, the 1619 Project), it is this sense of pessimism, this absence of a mission to unify the nation around enduring ideals.
In the speech, the “grandest of these ideals is an unfolding American promise that everyone belongs, that everyone deserves a chance, that no insignificant person was ever born.”
The speech hardly claims that we have succeeded in reaching these ideals. What it does claim is that we should all aim for them, that these ideals belong to all of us. That is what’s missing in today’s movement to redo America— the word “all.” This is a movement that speaks to “some,” but definitely not “all.”
Because the movement holds such chronic resentment over the country’s sinful past, there is a tendency to overlook our nation’s progress, further exacerbating our divisions. Indeed, unity has become a quaint and naïve notion in the midst of a perceived imperative to overhaul a “systemically racist” country.
We are a broken and divided nation today because we have lost sight of our shared and enduring ideals. Nestled in our tribal factions, we care more about grabbing power than finding ways of coming together around common concerns.
For all of the activist talk, there is nothing unifying or elevating about such a movement. We are a broken and divided nation today because we have lost sight of our shared and enduring ideals. Nestled in our tribal factions, we care more about grabbing power than finding ways of coming together around common concerns.
The speech frowns on such a cynicism of division, preferring the optimism of possibility. It calls on all Americans to enact the American promise:
“Americans are called to enact this promise in our lives and in our laws. And though our nation has sometimes halted, and sometimes delayed, we must follow no other course.”
Such steadfastness is justified because “our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along.”
The speech is elegant and optimistic, but it doesn’t avoid hard-nosed realism:
“While many of our citizens prosper, others doubt the promise, even the justice, of our own country. The ambitions of some Americans are limited by failing schools and hidden prejudice and the circumstances of their birth. And sometimes our differences run so deep, it seems we share a continent, but not a country.”
Those failings, however, are no reason to give up on our shared mission:
“We do not accept [our failures], and we will not allow it. Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”
So, as we celebrate Presidents Day at a time when our leaders seem to have forgotten these foundational and unifying ideals, let us honor words and ideas that do justice to these ideals.
Who delivered them? It almost doesn’t matter, because they belong in every presidential speech.
But, for the record, it was President George W. Bush, on Jan. 20, 2001.
Happy Presidents Day.
