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What makes a memorable inaugural address?  Consider the following: “We have been, and propose to be, more and more American. We believe that we can best serve our own country and most successfully discharge our obligations to humanity by continuing to be openly and candidly, intensely and scrupulously, American. If we have any heritage, it has been that. If we have any destiny, we have found it in that direction.”

Or: “Let us now join reason to faith and action to experience, to transform our unity of interest into a unity of purpose. For the hour and the day and the time are here to achieve progress without strife, to achieve change without hatred; not without difference of opinion but without the deep and abiding divisions which scar the union for generations.”

Now this: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

The first excerpt is from Calvin Coolidge’s 1925 inaugural address, the second from Lyndon Johnson’s in 1965, and the third, of course, is Lincoln’s second inaugural given in 1865, shortly before his assassination. It is probably the most famous presidential inaugural of all.  Almost all of us recognized Lincoln’s words, but I doubt very few of you recognized the other two passages. Why – what makes Lincoln’s speech so memorable?

Anyone reading through the 55 presidential inaugural addresses to date (and I’ve read them all!) will find that they follow a common pattern: an opening paean to the democratic ritual of a transition in power, often cloaked in an appeal to unity and to transcending partisanship power (“We are all Democrats. We are all Federalists”).  Sometimes this includes a statement of the theme to come – an introduction to the rest of the speech. This is then followed by a listing of the problems facing the country, and the world, and the difficulties in solving those problems. Part three then typically reaffirms American’s commitment and ability to solving those problems, if partisanship is put aside (“If we succeed it will not be because of what we have, but it will be because of what we are; not because of what we own, but rather because of what we believe” – LBJ 1965.)  Often there is reference to American institutions.  Finally, the president concludes with an appeal to a higher power – the Almighty, or God.

Since presidents rarely stray from this formula, what makes some addresses more noteworthy than others?  History suggests that stirring words alone are not enough to make an inaugural address memorable.  With the advent of nationally broadcast addresses, and the use of speechwriters, rhetorical flourishes are now the norm.  But some of the most powerful speeches are remembered for very simple declarative statements. Consider FDR’s: “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself…” Or Reagan in 1981: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”  The power of these statements lies less in their literary construct than in their ability to isolate the transcendent issue of the day.

A memorable address, then, depends on the speaker’s ability to capture the essence of the moment in a way that resonates with most Americans.  There are two parts to this equation. First, extraordinary speeches require extraordinary times.  Consider the most frequently cited inaugural addresses: all occurred at a time of great national peril, beginning with Jefferson’s 1801 address, the first to take place after a change of political power in our nation. Lincoln’s second inaugural occurred in the middle of civil war. Roosevelt’s took place at a time of unprecedented economic depression; Kennedy’s clarion call to “bear any burden, pay any price” rang out during the heart of the Cold War, and Reagan’s when the nation was ready to reject the legacy of the New Deal and  embrace a new governing philosophy.

So the times bring forth great speeches. But a second required ingredient is the ability of the president (beginning with the speechwriters who, since at least FDR’s presidency, write the initial drafts) to capture the essence of the problem facing the nation, and to link that to a solution that embodies transcendent American values.

Are those ingredients in place today?  Certainly, we live in perilous times and all eyes are focused on the incoming administration to a degree not seen since Reagan took office in 1981. Expectations, then, are high.  But can Obama deliver?  Can he capture the essence of the problem – and a distinctly American solution – in a lasting phrase or declaration?

We’ll know in a few minutes.

Send me your reactions after the speech.

What’s up in Pennsylvania?  I have noted in previous posts that I don’t see much chance that McCain can win Pennsylvania, a state that went blue for Kerry in 2004, and which has generally voted Democratic in recent elections.  And yet McCain and Palin have spent more time in this state than almost any other in the last two weeks. What explains this decision?  My best guess is that it reflects three factors:

1. The undecideds in Pennsylvania mirror those in the national survey by Pew: more religious, less educated, less affluent and thus more likely to vote for McCain.
2. Internal polling in McCain’s camp shows that polls are overestimating support for Obama, and that existing support for him is “soft.”
3. McCain simply doesn’t have many alternatives for reaching the magic 270 mark, given the likelihood that he will lose Virginia, Iowa and New Mexico – all states won by Bush in 2004.

So, is the extensive campaigning by McCain and Palin having an effect?

Yes it is.  Based on RCP’s average of polls, McCain has sliced 4% off Obama’s lead in the last two weeks. The problem, however, is that McCain remains behind by more than 9%  – an almost overwhelming deficit with a week left in the campaign.  Either he knows something that the rest of us don’t, or he sees no other route to getting an Electoral College majority.  If McCain’s campaign is going to pull the upset, it will likely require a huge turnaround in the Keystone State.

Why hold debates at all?  Several students have asked me this in light of my gentle chiding of the pundits for their predilection to declare a victor in the debates on the basis of dubious evidence (see, for example, the remarks of FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver here or those at the Daily Kos here.)  By now, I trust, you have read enough of my posts to understand why the partisan-colored debate reaction is misleading: instant polling results typically reflect the underlying partisan composition of those polled because most people “score” the debate through their own partisan predispositions.  It is for this reason that debates rarely, by themselves, change anyone’s vote.  For example, the CBS Knowledge Poll post-debate instapoll had Obama winning the most recent presidential debate, 40%-26%, over McCain, with 34% calling it a tie.  Putting aside for the moment that the “fine print” in the survey data indicates that an unspecified number of these “uncommitted” voters actually have expressed a preference for one of the two candidates, the results – which were widely reported in the press – obscure the more important fact that the debate failed to persuade the vast majority of viewers to support either candidate. Buried at the very end of the CBS story (literally the last paragraph!) was this: “Immediately after the debate, 15 percent of them said they are now committed to Obama, and 12 percent are now committed to McCain. But most – 72 percent – remain uncommitted.”  In raw numbers, that means of the 516 “uncommitted” viewers polled by CBS, 77 were moved by the debate to support Obama, 62 decided to back McCain, but 372 remain undecided!  Assuming that the composition of the viewing audience mirrors that reported in CNN, with Democrats slightly outnumbering Republicans, and factoring in the margin of error with the sample, we can safely conclude that the debate had almost no measurable national impact in terms of changing the balance of support for either candidate.  Presumably, that’s the statistic and related point that should have led the discussion in the Daily Kos, or in Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, but both sites conveniently forgot to even address the methodological or substantive issues I raise here.  One can forgive them, of course, because neither presumes to provide an objective analysis of the election – they are partisans who are advocating for a candidate (which is why I don’t link to their sites on my blog and why I urge caution for anyone who reads their election analyses.)  But CBS is supposed to be a nonpartisan source, and it is simply bad journalism not to lead with this statistic, never mind burying it at the bottom of the story.  (Let’s be clear here: the title of the CBS article is: “CBS Poll: Uncommitted Voters Favor Obama.”  It’s not clear to me that this is even factually accurate, never mind a serious distortion of the poll results.  Here’s the link. )

The relatively inconsequential impact, in terms of changing votes, of the three debates so far raises a more important issue than the well-documented partisan bias of the blogosphere: why hold debates at all?  Are they simply meaningless exercises?  Not at all.  The key to understanding the significance of debates is to view them as one piece of a larger mosaic that each voter must piece together before deciding how to vote on November 4.  That is, rather than a single event, to be won or lost by the candidates, debates are better understood as part of an ongoing process by which voters both become activated to pay attention to the campaign and better informed regarding the relative merits of the two candidates.  In this light, candidates aren’t trying to “win the debate” – they are using it as a forum in their continual effort to frame the campaign in a way that plays to their political interest.  Pundits may make a great deal of  Obama’s “cool” demeanor, McCain’s reference to Obama as “that one”, or his failure to look at Obama during the debate, but there’s not much evidence that undecided voters care a whit about these issues.  Instead, they are fitting the candidates’ debate performance into an ongoing internal dialogue that is based on the myriad sources of information each voter is exposed to during the course of the campaign.  Viewed in this light, debates need to be assessed not in terms of who “won” or “lost” the individual event, but rather how well each candidate did in integrating his performance into this larger campaign strategy.  That means, in particular, whether the candidate effectively contributed to their ongoing effort to frame the fundamentals that will determine the presidential vote.  The fact that over 90% of Republicans watching the vice presidential debate thought Sarah Palin cleaned Biden’s clock, while over 90% of Democrats believed it was Biden that did the cleaning, doesn’t mean the debate was a useless exercise.  There remain a vast number of voters – literally millions – who are only now beginning to pay attention to the race.  The debates are an important source of information – but only one source – that these uncommitted voters draw on as they begin to think about how to vote, and that committed partisans use to reevaluate their support and/or to decide whether to vote at all.

Debates matter – but not in the way that the punditocracy, with their focus on winners and losers – suggests. I don’t expect Nate Silver or the denizens at the Daily Kos to understand this. But you should.