Essays on Inaugural Address

Presidential Inaugural Address is the first speech that a politician says as president and which outlines his objectives and challenges as the newly elected head of the country. In his address, Jan. 20, 2009, Barack Obama called on all Americans to unite the common efforts in the fight against the crisis and in improving the world both at home and abroad. He began his speech with a description of the current disappointing situation in the country, including the social and economic spheres of life. Next, he moved to the more general and global challenges of foreign policy, which he ...

One of the things Ronald Reagan was most known for during his presidency was his belief that the main focus of America is to better the lives of its citizens. This is echoed in George H. W. Bush’s inaugural address in which he states in a prayer to God, “there is just one use of power and it is to serve people” (1989). Bush also mentions how Americans were living during a time full of promise and opportunity (1989), which is a reverberation of Reagan’s previous State of the Union in 1988. This suggests that Bush was ...

The civic virtues that are being discussed in the provided excerpts can be divided into three broad categories, namely, obtaining and maintenance of civic knowledge and putting one’s civic knowledge to use through public participation; being self-assertive when necessary, and self-restraint. Taken together, the passages suggest that to the Framers, the model citizen would be one that understands the issues of importance in the community and nation, is actively engaged in public life, and who know when to zealously advocate his point of view or concede depending upon the specific circumstances. Three examples are illustrative of this point. ...

Introduction

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the second President in American postwar history, who ruled two terms. He left office with high public credibility, and greatly contributed to the fact that Vice President George Bush in 1988 was elected as his successor. If you follow the comments of some journalists, political scientists and historians, you would see that any other President after Franklin D. Roosevelt had not implemented a big change in the life of American society than Ronald Reagan. It was about the "conservative revolution", and even "Reagan revolution". In these cases, as a rule, among the main reasons that ...

The first essential step in analyzing the speech is the process of identifying the purpose of the speech. In our case, both three representatives are the Presidents of the United States so we analyze their inaugural addresses. The purpose of the rhetorical speech allows us to see the objectives of the speaker and measure the success of his words. In other words, we can trace whether he or she achieves his or her certain objective or not (Zarefsky). As for the particular inaugural addresses of John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Barack Obama, we may suggest that all ...

Introduction

In November 1960, the Republicans lost the presidential election, and a Democratic Party candidate John Fitzgerald Kennedy became the president of the United States. A relatively young man (43 years), he represented a new generation of American politicians. Veterans of the war years, a generation embodied by Dwight Eisenhower, were to leave the politics in the US. In the Soviet Union, a “war generation” remained in power until the mid-1980s. In France, Germany, and other countries of the Western Europe the same generation continued to reign. The Kennedy team was to revise the postulates of the military-political line of ...

The First Amendment evinces the framer’s intent to create a “wall of separation” between church and state. The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” (United States Constitution, amend, I). While there can be no government establishment of religion, religion and politics have long been closely enmeshed. Since the inception of the nation, prayer has played a prominent role in government ceremonies (Lee v. Weisman 633). Beginning with George Washington, all presidents taking the oath of office conclude with the words, “So help me God” (Jonassen 861). Presidents and politicians alike ...

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy delivered his inaugural address in 1961, he spoke with power and conviction, The famous speech, written mainly by one of his key advisers, Theodore Sorenson, proved to be a masterpiece for many reasons. The two main keys to its success were that JFK delivered a speech that used emotion-arousing words, and he made important references to American history. JFK’s inaugural address is renowned for its emotional qualities, and he accomplished this task partly by his liberal usage of emotion-arousing words. For example, after stating our planet is not the same as it was during ...