Calling On Student Leaders: Learning from The Best US Presidential Inauguration Speeches
Sometimes being ‘the leader of the free world’, really isn’t the easiest job you can have. Not only do you need to be wise and decisive, have the ability to run the third largest country by population, but rather you need amazing public speaking skills to deliver exhilarating addresses to your nation. Even though the inauguration speeches are never written down on paper as a must for your ceremony, it has become a habit for every single American president. Every single one of them has attempted to deliver thrilling speeches to the public to get emotions running high across the country. (Maybe except for George Washington, I really wouldn’t call his 2nd term inauguration speech with 134 words exciting, but he was indeed the found father...)
Many young leaders look up to Presidents for public speaking skills. Even if you don’t want to become President someday, aspiring student society leaders, it certainly helps to look at inauguration speeches for tips and advice.
1. Less is More
If you pay attention to any good public speakers, they will always tell you one tip: keep it short and simple. Nobody wants to hear a long speech dragging on for hours about how you want to run your country. All your supporters will fall asleep and lose all their adrenaline simply because you keep stretching your speech out. The three shortest speech excluding presidents who didn’t give a public address, they are delivered by some of the most respected and popular presidents in US History (namely: Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt). The three longest speeches are delivered by less popular presidents, and you definitely know you dragged on for too long when you catch a cold during your 8000 words long inauguration speech and die a month later due to pneumonia, or at least that’s what happened to William H. Harrison.
2. Unity is Strength
One of the main reasons why presidents continue to give inauguration speeches is because they unite the country together, especially after an election where a portion of people voted for your opponent. This is the chance to unify your country, convince your opponents you are better than they expect you to be, to let your supporters believe that you are the one who will make the country thrive. Thomas Jefferson, the second US president ended his speech with: “we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.”
3. Principles, not Policies
By stating your policies in your speech, you are basically repeating the first and most essential mistake, it makes your speech become too long. During election, people listened to your policies and tactics thoroughly, that’s why they did or didn’t voted for you, there’s simply no point reinstating what has been established. Identify the way you want your country to be for the next four years, what people expect.
4. There’s no “I” in Team
The power of rhetorical words is way beyond imagination. Replacing “I” in your speeches with “we” sometimes changes your whole speech, and it connects to your audience to make them feel related or closer to you. Using “I” makes you look very obnoxious, but using “we” on the other hand shows you care about your country. A great speech usually comes in presidency that they are facing a crisis, war, famine, depression etc. Delivering a great speech by uniting every single one of them not only makes your speech more memorable, but you presidency will be written down in the history books because of how powerful you made your speech seems.
With that in mind, when most speeches are forgotten overnight, here let’s look at a few inauguration speeches that wrote it’s name in the history books:
John F. Kennedy (January 20 1961)
John F. Kennedy had a challenging yet tragic (due to his assassination), because he had to deal with uprising of the Soviet Union (USSR), especially the Cuban Missile Crisis, where tensions escalated to serious level. JFK was always an assertive and strong character, where people had high expectations of him, and he delivered it during his speech. He used metaphor, emotive languages and descriptions so every single American can be motivated by this speech. Just look at JFK’s speech during 1961, he has used the word “we” 27 times, most of time highlighting the important parts of his speech, while “I” was only used a mere 3 times. JFK successfully created his image as a young, liberal leader of the free world, and this speech was one of the most inspirational in years in a cold morning during Cold war where times were full of tension and sadness. All good inauguration speeches usually end with a punchline that will be forever remembered as a trademark for that president, and JFK was no exception. He famously said:
“And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.
“My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”
Powerful.
Franklin D. Roosevelt (March 4 1933)
Like Kennedy, Roosevelt’s America has been through a lot, after the worst economic depression in history and facing the uprising of fascism and dictatorships in Europe, Roosevelt undeniably has one of the toughest job in American history. Undeniably one of the more tougher presidency, FDR’s brilliance has caused him to run for president not once, not twice but a whopping four times before passing away in 1945 due to a stroke.
A person with his talent would have delivered dozens of good speeches, but what marked his excellence for his first inauguration speech where most people remember him for. Something he said during the speech marked his strong personality, leaving a quotation that most of us still use until now, where he famously expressed his feeling about the States’ future: “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Notice how he used the the collective rhetorical of ‘we’, where this is more commonly known as first person plural perspective, as it makes your audience feel more related and involved, and for FDR it unifies America after a the worst economic recession at that time. (It’s a very useful tip for persuasive public talking, you know.)
Barack Obama (January 20 2009)
It doesn’t matter if you supported Obama’s administration or not, one thing everyone will agree on is that he is one of the best public speakers in history. As the first African American president elect, and his iconic catchphrase of “change”, his attendance rate at Capitol Hill was one of the highest. Drawing parallels to FDR, Obama had to lead America out of the Great Recession of 2008. Like every other single great speeches, Obama had to inspire America as unemployment rate was at its peak during 2008. Obama lived up to his expectations and delivered one of the most inspiring speeches, with not only Americans cheering for him, but rather the whole world. This is one of the few moments where people remember where they were and what they were doing when they watched this inauguration ceremony. Here’s one of the many great lines he used to inspire Americans:
“We gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”
Abraham Lincoln
Finally, how could we forget the President that’s voted as one of the best Presidents in US history, the face of the statue looking over Capitol hill and Washington Monument in DC? There’s no need for extra illustration on how successful Lincoln was when you consider there’s a memorial remembering him? It would be a disgrace to leave him out of this list as his speech was the reason why we didn’t have another civil war or the USA that we know today exists. He knew he had a hard task ahead of him by unifying the separated America after the war and unifying the union states with the confederate states when America was on the brink of crippling. He pleaded to the south:
“Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them.”
“Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends?”
