I was 15 in January of 1965, the first time since we had moved to Virginia that there was a presidential inauguration.
There is so much I don’t remember about details, but I remember my sister Laura and I were in the Capitol Hill area to see the ceremonies.
The crowd was maybe the biggest we had never seen, and we couldn’t get anywhere near to where Lyndon B. Johnson would take the oath and then deliver his inaugural address.
So just as I can jokingly say I’m one of the few sighted people who has been to the Grand Canyon and never saw the canyon, I went to a presidential inauguration and never saw the president.
After all, there were 1.2 million people in attendance. We found something on the periphery that was interesting in a different way. It was somewhere near the north end of the Capitol, and it was where cars were loading up with the governors of the 50 states and a few other dignitaries for the inaugural parade.
We were among a few kids getting the front page of that day’s Washington Post autographed by as many dignitaries as possible. We didn’t get anywhere near all of them, but I remember we got New York’s Nelson Rockefeller, Michigan’s George Romney and California’s Pat Brown.
We also got the autograph of a truly historical figure. Jeannette Rankin of Montana was 84 years old, and had been the first woman ever to serve in Congress. She served two terms 24 years apart, the first of them four years before women were even allowed to vote. She was a dedicated pacifist and after the attack on Pearl Harbor was the only member of Congress to vote against declaring war on Japan.
It’s strange. The crowd of 1.2 million was the third largest before or since. Harry Truman had a crowd of 1.3 million in 1949 and Barack Obama had 1.8 million at his first inauguration in 2009.
I lived in the Washington area for four inaugurations — Johnson in 1965, Nixon in 1969 and 1973 and Reagan in 1981. I moved away in 1982 and I was living in Austria when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated in 1977.
The one I was there for, the 1965 inauguration, was in many ways the end of our national innocence. With the exception of the fringes, most people still believed in the goodness of life then. Johnson had made some enemies in the South by pushing the Civil Rights Act through Congress the year before, but most of the non-racist right was still part of the mainstream.
Just five years earlier, in one of the presidential debates, Richard Nixon told Americans that basically he and John F. Kennedy basically wanted the same things for America and their only real disagreements were on how to do things.
But by the 1969 inaugural, Vietnam had begun tearing the country apart.
Johnson said in 1965 that “We are one nation and one people. Our fate as a nation and our future as a people rest not upon one citizen, but upon all citizens.”
The tone hadn’t changed much in 1969.
“I ask you to share with me today the majesty of this moment. In the orderly transfer of power, we celebrate the unity that keeps us free.,” Nixon said.
But a big change began in 1981, when conservatives began misquoting a statement Ronald Reagan made.
Reagan said: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
For 40 years since, conservatives have dropped the first four words. Of course, Reagan also said the scariest nine words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
And the right wing has hated the government ever since.
By 2017, Donald Trump spoke of American carnage” in a speech that former President George W. Bush said was “some weird shit.”
When it came to hating the government, Trump was Reagan on steroids. He appointed people to his cabinet who didn’t believe in the mission of their agency. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a far-right billionaire, was opposed to public education. We have certainly come a long way since 1965.
When Joe Biden takes the oath of office Wednesday, he will almost certainly be the last elected president born before the Baby Boom. Biden first came to Washington in 1973 as a 30-year-old senator, and he will be the oldest person ever to be president.
January 1973 was also the month President Johnson died. Four other men who served after him have also died. Only two 20th century presidents — Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton — are still living.
Johnson is remembered at least partly for the tragedy of Vietnam, but domestically he did amazing things and should probably be credited as one of the five or six best presidents on that score.
The man ended Jim Crow laws.
His Great Society reduced the percentage of those living in poverty from 29 percent to 15 percent. The number didn’t go up again until Reagan ended many of LBJ’s programs.
And he aimed high.
From the conclusion of his inaugural address:
“Under this covenant of justice, liberty, and union we have become a nation–prosperous, great, and mighty. And we have kept our freedom. But we have no promise from God that our greatness will endure. We have been allowed by Him to seek greatness with the sweat of our hands and the strength of our spirit.
“I do not believe that the Great Society is the ordered, changeless, and sterile battalion of the ants. It is the excitement of becoming–always becoming, trying, probing, falling, resting, and trying again–but always trying and always gaining.
“In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again.
“If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.
“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.
“For we are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day’s pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and union, and in our own Union. We believe that every man must someday be free. And we believe in ourselves.
“Our enemies have always made the same mistake. In my lifetime–in depression and in war–they have awaited our defeat. Each time, from the secret places of the American heart, came forth the faith they could not see or that they could not even imagine. It brought us victory. And it will again.
“For this is what America is all about. It is the uncrossed desert and the unclimbed ridge. It is the star that is not reached and the harvest sleeping in the unplowed ground. Is our world gone? We say “Farewell.” Is a new world coming? We welcome it–and we will bend it to the hopes of man.
“”To these trusted public servants and to my family and those close friends of mine who have followed me down a long, winding road, and to all the people of this Union and the world, I will repeat today what I said on that sorrowful day in November 1963: “I will lead and I will do the best I can.”
“But you must look within your own hearts to the old promises and to the old dream. They will lead you best of all.
“For myself, I ask only, in the words of an ancient leader: “Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?”
A great man, a near-great president.
American carnage?
No, American dreams.