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Welcome to U.S. history!
George Bush's Inaugural
Address:
| Mr. Chief Justice, Mr. President, Vice President Quayle,
Senator Mitchell, Speaker Wright, Senator Dole, Congressman Michel, and fellow citizens,
neighbors, and friends: There is
a man here who has earned a lasting place in our hearts and in our history. President
Reagan, on behalf of our Nation, I thank you for the wonderful things that you have done
for America. |
| I have just repeated word for word the oath
taken by George Washington 200 years ago, and the Bible on which I placed my hand is the
Bible on which he placed his. It is right that the memory of Washington be with us today,
not only because this is our Bicentennial Inauguration, but because Washington remains the
Father of our Country. And he would, I think, be gladdened by this day; for today is the
concrete expression of a stunning fact: our continuity these 200 years since our
government began. |
| We meet on democracy's front porch, a good place
to talk as neighbors and as friends. For this is a day when our nation is made whole, when
our differences, for a moment, are suspended. |
| And my first act as President is a prayer. I ask
you to bow your heads: |
| Heavenly Father, we bow our heads and thank You
for Your love. Accept our thanks for the peace that yields this day and the shared faith
that makes its continuance likely. Make us strong to do Your work, willing to heed and
hear Your will, and write on our hearts these words: "Use power to help people."
For we are given power not to advance our own purposes, nor to make a great show in the
world, nor a name. There is but one just use of power, and it is to serve people. Help us
to remember it, Lord. Amen. |
| I come before you and assume the Presidency at a
moment rich with promise. We live in a peaceful, prosperous time, but we can make it
better. For a new breeze is blowing, and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn; for in
man's heart, if not in fact, the day of the dictator is over. The totalitarian era is
passing, its old ideas blown away like leaves from an ancient, lifeless tree. A new breeze
is blowing, and a nation refreshed by freedom stands ready to push on. There is new ground
to be broken, and new action to be taken. There are times when the future seems thick as a
fog; you sit and wait, hoping the mists will lift and reveal the right path. But this is a
time when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow. |
| Great nations of the world are moving toward
democracy through the door to freedom. Men and women of the world move toward free markets
through the door to prosperity. The people of the world agitate for free expression and
free thought through the door to the moral and intellectual satisfactions that only
liberty allows. |
| We know what works: Freedom works. We know
what's right: Freedom is right. We know how to secure a more just and prosperous life for
man on Earth: through free markets, free speech, free elections, and the exercise of free
will unhampered by the state. |
| For the first time in this century, for the
first time in perhaps all history, man does not have to invent a system by which to live.
We don't have to talk late into the night about which form of government is better. We
don't have to wrest justice from the kings. We only have to summon it from within
ourselves. We must act on what we know. I take as my guide the hope of a saint: In crucial
things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all things, generosity. |
| America today is a proud, free nation, decent
and civil, a place we cannot help but love. We know in our hearts, not loudly and proudly,
but as a simple fact, that this country has meaning beyond what we see, and that our
strength is a force for good. But have we changed as a nation even in our time? Are we
enthralled with material things, less appreciative of the nobility of work and sacrifice? |
| My friends, we are not the sum of our
possessions. They are not the measure of our lives. In our hearts we know what matters. We
cannot hope only to leave our children a bigger car, a bigger bank account. We must hope
to give them a sense of what it means to be a loyal friend, a loving parent, a citizen who
leaves his home, his neighborhood and town better than he found it. What do we want the
men and women who work with us to say when we are no longer there? That we were more
driven to succeed than anyone around us? Or that we stopped to ask if a sick child had
gotten better, and stayed a moment there to trade a word of friendship? |
| No President, no government, can teach us to
remember what is best in what we are. But if the man you have chosen to lead this
government can help make a difference; if he can celebrate the quieter, deeper successes
that are made not of gold and silk, but of better hearts and finer souls; if he can do
these things, then he must. |
| America is never wholly herself unless she is
engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make
kinder the face of the Nation and gentler the face of the world. My friends, we have work
to do. There are the homeless, lost and roaming. There are the children who have nothing,
no love, no normalcy. There are those who cannot free themselves of enslavement to
whatever addiction—drugs, welfare, the demoralization that rules the slums. There is
crime to be conquered, the rough crime of the streets. There are young women to be helped
who are about to become mothers of children they can't care for and might not love. They
need our care, our guidance, and our education, though we bless them for choosing life. |
| The old solution, the old way, was to think that
public money alone could end these problems. But we have learned that is not so. And in
any case, our funds are low. We have a deficit to bring down. We have more will than
wallet; but will is what we need. We will make the hard choices, looking at what we have
and perhaps allocating it differently, making our decisions based on honest need and
prudent safety. And then we will do the wisest thing of all: We will turn to the only
resource we have that in times of need always grows—the goodness and the courage of
the American people. |
| I am speaking of a new engagement in the lives
of others, a new activism, hands-on and involved, that gets the job done. We must bring in
the generations, harnessing the unused talent of the elderly and the unfocused energy of
the young. For not only leadership is passed from generation to generation, but so is
stewardship. And the generation born after the Second World War has come of age. |
| I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of
all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing
good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led,
rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to
the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every
member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are
not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its
expression in taking part and pitching in. |
| We need a new engagement, too, between the
Executive and the Congress. The challenges before us will be thrashed out with the House
and the Senate. We must bring the Federal budget into balance. And we must ensure that
America stands before the world united, strong, at peace, and fiscally sound. But, of
course, things may be difficult. We need compromise; we have had dissension. We need
harmony; we have had a chorus of discordant voices. |
| For Congress, too, has changed in our time.
There has grown a certain divisiveness. We have seen the hard looks and heard the
statements in which not each other's ideas are challenged, but each other's motives. And
our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other. It has been
this way since Vietnam. That war cleaves us still. But, friends, that war began in earnest
a quarter of a century ago; and surely the statute of limitations has been reached. This
is a fact: The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be
sundered by a memory. A new breeze is blowing, and the old bipartisanship must be made new
again. |
| To my friends—and yes, I do mean
friends—in the loyal opposition—and yes, I mean loyal: I put out my hand. I am
putting out my hand to you, Mr. Speaker. I am putting out my hand to you, Mr. Majority
Leader. For this is the thing: This is the age of the offered hand. We can't turn back
clocks, and I don't want to. But when our fathers were young, Mr. Speaker, our differences
ended at the water's edge. And we don't wish to turn back time, but when our mothers were
young, Mr. Majority Leader, the Congress and the Executive were capable of working
together to produce a budget on which this nation could live. Let us negotiate soon and
hard. But in the end, let us produce. The American people await action. They didn't send
us here to bicker. They ask us to rise above the merely partisan. "In crucial things,
unity"—and this, my friends, is crucial. |
| To the world, too, we offer new engagement and a
renewed vow: We will stay strong to protect the peace. The "offered hand" is a
reluctant fist; but once made, strong, and can be used with great effect. There are today
Americans who are held against their will in foreign lands, and Americans who are
unaccounted for. Assistance can be shown here, and will be long remembered. Good will
begets good will. Good faith can be a spiral that endlessly moves on. |
| Great nations like great men must keep their
word. When America says something, America means it, whether a treaty or an agreement or a
vow made on marble steps. We will always try to speak clearly, for candor is a compliment,
but subtlety, too, is good and has its place. While keeping our alliances and friendships
around the world strong, ever strong, we will continue the new closeness with the Soviet
Union, consistent both with our security and with progress. One might say that our new
relationship in part reflects the triumph of hope and strength over experience. But hope
is good, and so are strength and vigilance. |
| Here today are tens of thousands of our citizens
who feel the understandable satisfaction of those who have taken part in democracy and
seen their hopes fulfilled. But my thoughts have been turning the past few days to those
who would be watching at home, to an older fellow who will throw a salute by himself when
the flag goes by, and the women who will tell her sons the words of the battle hymns. I
don't mean this to be sentimental. I mean that on days like this, we remember that we are
all part of a continuum, inescapably connected by the ties that bind. |
| Our children are watching in schools throughout
our great land. And to them I say, thank you for watching democracy's big day. For
democracy belongs to us all, and freedom is like a beautiful kite that can go higher and
higher with the breeze. And to all I say: No matter what your circumstances or where you
are, you are part of this day, you are part of the life of our great nation. |
| A President is neither prince nor pope, and I
don't seek a window on men's souls. In fact, I yearn for a greater tolerance, an
easy-goingness about each other's attitudes and way of life. |
| There are few clear areas in which we as a
society must rise up united and express our intolerance. The most obvious now is drugs.
And when that first cocaine was smuggled in on a ship, it may as well have been a deadly
bacteria, so much has it hurt the body, the soul of our country. And there is much to be
done and to be said, but take my word for it: This scourge will stop. |
| And so, there is much to do; and tomorrow the
work begins. I do not mistrust the future; I do not fear what is ahead. For our problems
are large, but our heart is larger. Our challenges are great, but our will is greater. And
if our flaws are endless, God's love is truly boundless. |
| Some see leadership as high drama, and the sound
of trumpets calling, and sometimes it is that. But I see history as a book with many
pages, and each day we fill a page with acts of hopefulness and meaning. The new breeze
blows, a page turns, the story unfolds. And so today a chapter begins, a small and stately
story of unity, diversity, and generosity—shared, and written, together. |
| Thank you. God bless you and God bless the
United States of America. |
Back
to George Bush
Executive Oath of Office
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of
President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and
defend the Constitution of the United States."
United States Constitution, Article II,
Section 1, Clause 8
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back in Time
1George Washington, 2John
Adamsl, 3Thomas Jefferson, 4James Madison, 5James
Monroe, 6John Quincy Adams, 7Andrew Jackson, 8Martin
Van Buren,9William H Harrison,10John Tyler,11James K
Polk, 12Zachary Taylor, 13Millard Fillmore,14Franklin
Pierce,15James Buchanan,16Abraham Lincoln, 17Andrew
Johnson, 18Ulysses S Grant,19Rutherford B Hayes, 20James A Garfield, 21Chester
A. Arthur, 22Grover
Cleveland,23Benjamin Harrison, 24Grover Cleveland, 25William
McKinley,26Theodore Roosevelt, 27William H. Taft,28Woodrow Wilson, 29Warren
G. Harding,30Calvin Coolidge,31Herbert Hoover,32Franklin
D Roosevelt,33Harry S.
Truman, 34Dwight D Eisenhower,35John F Kennedy, 36Lyndon
B Johnson, 37RichardN. Nixon, 38Gerald R Ford, 39James E
Carter,40Ronald
W. Reagan, 41George
HerbertW. Bush, 42Bill Clinton,
43George Walker Bush 44
Barack H. Obama
last updated
07/14/09
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