(HOST) We don’t yet know who it will be, but a year from now, we will have just inaugurated a new President. Commentator Peter Gilbert, executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council, reminds us that a few decades ago, Inauguration Day did not happen until March.
(GILBERT) All the presidential primaries – even the November general election – they all are leading up to the day our next president will be inaugurated – January 20, 2009. But earlier in our country’s history, Inauguration Day was later – six weeks and a day later, on March 4th. (Washington’s first Inaugural is an exception; it was held even later, on April 30.) The extra time was necessary given the difficulties of communication and transportation: it took time for the President-Elect to line up his cabinet and for all those people to travel to the nation’s capital wherever that was: The first inauguration was in New York, and the second and third in Philadelphia, our first two national capitols. Jefferson was the first President to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C.
It wasn’t until 1933 and the passage of the Twentieth Amendment that Inauguration Day was moved to January 20th. It also changed the starting date for each Congressional session from March 4th to January 3rd. And you can guess why: When Franklin Roosevelt was first elected in November 1932, the country was in the midst of a devastating Depression. People wanted immediate action , but he wasn’t sworn in until four months after the election. When he finally was sworn in, President Roosevelt skipped his Inaugural ball and worked through the night. Later that year, the new Congress pushed the 20th Amendment through, and state legislatures quickly ratified it.
Some might argue that we no longer need – and cannot afford – even two and a half months between the election and the Inauguration. On the other hand, an election could be so close that it takes some time to determine the winner, as was the case in the Bush-Gore election of 2000. Moreover, the growth of the executive branch means that a change of administration brings not just new cabinet members but thousands of people changing jobs – real people with spouses and children and countless arrangements to be made.
While Washington’s first inauguration was outside, it wasn’t until Andrew Jackson in 1829 that the tradition began of holding the ceremony, weather permitting, on the steps of the Capitol, typically on the east side of the building. You may have seen the photograph of Lincoln’s Second Inauguration in that location, with John Wilkes Booth clearly visible, standing well within shooting range; just forty days later, he would assassinate the President.
It was Ronald Reagan who moved the ceremony to the Mall side of the Capitol, a site that could accommodate hundreds of thousands of spectators.
Public ceremonies are not typically held on Sundays, and so when Inauguration Day falls on a Sunday, as it does every 28 years, the President is typically sworn in at a private ceremony and the public inauguration takes place the next day, Monday, January 21. That’s what happened at Ronald Reagan’s second Inaugural, and will presumably happen again in 2013, at the end of our next president’s term – whoever that person turns out to be.