Public Affairs; President Richard Nixon Inaugural Speech 1/20/1969

Nixon I asked Nixon do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of the United States president of the United States to the best of your ability. And will to the best of my Ability preserve protect and. Preserve protect and defend the Constitution and the Constitution of the United States. So help you God. So help me God. The law. Senator Dirksen Mr. Chief Justice. Mr. Vice President.

President Johnson Vice President Humphrey my fellow Americans and my fellow citizens of the world community. 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. Each moment in history is a fleeting time precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginnings in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries. This can be such a moment. Forces now are converging that make possible for the first time. The hope that many of man's beepers aspirations can at last be realized the spiraling pace of change allows us to contemplate within our own lifetime advances that once would have taken centuries and throwing wide the horizons of

space we have discovered new horizons on earth. For the first time because the people of the world want peace and the leaders of the world are afraid of war. The times are on the side of peace. Thank you. Thank years from now. America will celebrate its 200 anniversary as a nation and within the lifetime of most people now living mankind will celebrate that great new year which comes only once in a thousand years. The beginning of the third millennium. What kind of a nation we will be. What kind of a world we will live in whether we shape the future in the image of our hopes is ours as they determine by our actions and our choices. The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of

peacemaker. This honor now beckons America. The chance to help lead the world at last out of the valley of turmoil. And on to that high ground of peace that man has dreamed of since the dawn of civilization. If we succeed in generations to come will say of us now living that we mastered our moment. That we help make the world safe for mankind. This is our summons to great. And I believe the American people are ready to answer this call. The second third of this century has been a time of proud achievement. We have made enormous strides in science and industry and agriculture. We have shared our wealth more broadly than ever. We learned at last to manage a modern economy to assure its continued growth. We have given freedom which

we have begun. To make its promise real for black as well as for White. We see the hope of tomorrow. In the youth of today. I know America. I believe in that we can be proud. That they are better educated more committed more passionately driven by conscience than any generation in our history. Thank you. No people has ever been so close to the achievement of a just an abundant society or so possessed of the will to achieve and because our strengths are so great we can afford. To appraise our weaknesses with candor and to approach them with hope. Standing in this same place a third of a century ago Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation ravaged by depression.

Gripped in fear he could say in surveying the nation's troubles they concern thank God. Only material. Our crisis today is in reverse. We find ourselves rich in goods but ragged in spirit reaching with magnificent perception for the moon but falling into rockets discard on earth. We are caught in war wanting peace were torn by division wanting unity we see around us empty lives wanting fulfillment. We see tasks that need doing. Waiting for hands to do them to a crisis of the Spirit. We need an answer of the spirit and to find that answer. We need only look within ourselves. When we listen to the better angels of our nature we find that they celebrate the simple things the basic things

such as goodness decency love kindness. Greatness comes in simple trappings the simple things are the ones most need of the day. If we are to some mountain what divides us and some in what unites us. To lower our voices would be a simple thing. In these difficult years America has suffered from a fever of words from inflated rhetoric of promises more than it can deliver from angry rhetoric that fans discontent and the hatreds from bombastic rhetoric the postures instead of persuading. We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another. Until we speak quietly enough. So that our words can be heard. As well as our voices. For its part government will listen.

We will strive to listen in new ways to the voices of quiet anguish. Devices that speak without words. The voices of the heart. To the injured voices the anxious voices the voices that have despaired of being heard. Those who have been left out. We will try to bring in. Those left behind. We will help to catch up. For all of our people. We will set as our goal the decent order that makes progress possible in our lives. As we reach toward our hopes our task is to build on what has gone before. Not turning away from the old but turning toward the new. And this past third of a century government has passed more laws spent more money initiated more programs and all our previous history in pursuing our goals of full employment better housing excellence and education in rebuilding our cities and improving our rural areas and protecting our environment enhancing the quality of life in all these and more.

We will and must press her gently for. We shall plan now for the day when our wealth can be transferred from the destruction of war abroad to the urgent needs of our people at home. Thank you. The American dream does not come to those who fall asleep. But we are approaching. The limits of what government alone can do. Our greatest need now is to reach beyond government to enlist the legions of the concern and the community. What has to be done has to be done by government and people together or it will not be done at all. The lesson of past agony is that without the people we can do nothing. With the people. We can do everything. Thank you.

Thanks to match the magnitude of our tasks we need the energies of our people enlisted not only in grand enterprises but more importantly in those small splendid efforts that make headlines in the neighborhood newspaper instead of the National Journal. With these we can build a great cathedral of the Spirit. Each of its raising it one stone at a time. As he reaches out to his neighbors helping caring. Doing I do not offer a life of an inspiring ease. I do not call for a life of grim sacrifice. I ask you to join. In a high adventure. One as rich as humanity itself and exciting is the times we live in. The essence of freedom is that each of us shares in the shaping of his own destiny. Until then he has been part of a cause larger than himself. No man is truly home

the way to fulfillment is in the use of our talents. We achieve nobility and the spirit that inspires and gives as we measure what can be done. We shall promise only what we know we can produce. But as we chart our goals we shall be lifted by our dreams. No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. This means black and white together as one nation not two. The laws have caught up. With our conscience. What remains is to give life to what is in the law. To ensure it last. That is all are born equal in dignity for before God. All are born equal before man. As we learn to go forward together at home let us also seek to go forward together with all

mankind. Let us take as our goal where peace is now known make it welcome. Where peace is fragile make it strong. Where peace is temporary make it permanent. After a period of confrontation we are entering an era of negotiation. Let all nations know. That during this administration our lines of communication will be open. We seek an open world open to ideas open to the exchange of goods and people a world in which no people great or small will live in angry isolation. We cannot expect to make everyone our friend. But we can try to make no one our enemy. Those who would be our adversaries we invite to a peaceful competition

not in conquering territory or extending dominion but in enriching the life. Of man. As we explore the reaches of space let us go to the new worlds together not as new worlds to be conquered but as a new adventure to be shared. And with those who are willing to join let us cooperate to reduce the burden of arms to strengthen the structure of peace to lift up the poor and the hungry. But to all those who would be tempted by weakness let us leave no doubt. That we will be as strong as we need to be for as long as we need to be. Thank you. Over the past 20 years since I first came to this capital was a freshman congressman. I have visited most of the nations of the world.

I have come to know the leaders of the world. The great forces the hatreds the fears that divide the world. I know that peace does not come through wishing for it. That there is no substitute for days and even years of patient and prolonged diplomacy. I also know the people of the world I have seen the hunger of a homeless child. The pain of a man wounded in battle. The grief of a mother. Who has lost her son. I know these have no ideology no race. I know America. I know the heart of America is good. I speak from my own heart. And the heart of my country the deep concern we have. For those who suffer and those who suffer. I have taken an oath the day in the presence of God and my countrymen to uphold and

defend the Constitution of the United States and to that oath I now add this sacred I shall concentrate my office. My energies and all the wisdom I can summon to the cause of peace among nations. Let this message be heard by strong and weak alike. The peace we save the peace we seek to win. Is not victory over any other people. But the peace that comes with healing in its wings with compassion for those who have suffered with understanding for those who have opposed us with the opportunity for all the peoples of this earth to

choose their own destiny. Only a few short weeks ago we shared the glory of man's first sight of the world as God sees it as a single spare reflecting light in the dark as the Apollo astronauts flew over the moon's gray surface on Christmas Eve. They spoke to us of the beauty of earth and in that voice so clear across the lunar distance we heard them invoke God's blessing on its goodness in that moment their view from the moon moved poet Archibald MacLeish to write. To see the earth as it truly is small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats is to see ourselves as writers on the earth together. Brothers in that bright loveliness and the eternal Koch

brothers who know now. They are truly brothers. In that moment of surpassing technological progress men turn their thoughts toward home when humanity seeing and that our perspective. That man's destiny on earth is not divisible telling us that however fire we reach into the cosmos. Our destiny lies not in the stars. But on Earth itself in our own hands. In our own heart. We have endured a long night of the American spirit. But as our eyes catch the dimness of the first rays of dawn. Let us not curse the remaining dark. Let us gather a light. Our destiny offers not the cup of despair but the chalice of opportunity. So let us not in fear but in gladness and

writers on the earth together. Let us go forward. Firm in our faith steadfast in our purpose cautious of the dangers but sustained by our confidence in the will of God. And the promise of man. You are getting on the right.

The record unlike some of the bridges are crumbling in the carriage as we will know. I think unlike when Foreman and Kennedy know feelings of resentment. Like who will want his johnson The link is in the next room and if there is going to be needing a moment as has been a reaction in the Nichols and all your Internet commentators who decided it was his who is a document of liberal political no foreigners have been my little guys. A few bruises and wasn't going to do even a good bit of Conan refuse negotiation and it was American leadership in the country

and it's not. This was where his insistence on the sailing association was idiotic. More so than Nixon has he given you a hint about his friend. The experts have been analyzing everywhere the doctors in the race for the White House began making drawings and separate the significance of every government appointment he's met and I think getting that piece into the inauguration because if you are still up for the Political Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is at this moment waiting to talk to me in Boston and it's a Nicholas to measure the USA columnist and also the condition of Republicanism in Washington and around the immediate reaction here in London is that the speech was full of Ayers generalisations are not much more is with this deliberate political tactic. So is it going to be the foes of the Nixon administration. The people Richard Nixon is a very deliberate man who is very conscious of matters of political strategy and I think that the absence of any domestic

program in his speech certainly reflects Nixon feeling. The American people are tired of big programs and sacrifice for great goals. But the question is whether he'll be able to maintain that kind of a posture through the administration and others for years will tell us whether democracy democratic government can mobilize public support by quiet efficiency rather than by good matic new programs. Now does it. It was going to well I would say I would agree with part of a death that yes it is true that there will be no really new programs offered other than a few tax incentive programs to help business in the ghetto work. However there is almost consensus in the Congress that we need a great gesture here of all the Great Society legislation much of which isn't working and that when once this is out of the way once this great mass of Great Society legislation smoothed out then there may be new programs so I don't think it necessarily be for years to digest all of the displaced what has been the immediate reaction of people you talk to around that they

expect a slow approach. Yes they do. We certainly expect it in 1069. One of the points that I particularly because of the speech was this insistent reference to the need to bring the people back in the partnership with the companies in the state. Does this in any way indicate a change in the political center of gravity is it a way of bypassing a possibly Democratic Congress some people. No I don't think it's that I think it's perhaps somewhat forewarn hope that the administration can be relieved of some of the costs and the controversy that arise from large government programs I think that's what it is primarily regarded the system is as as an attempt to move the government functions back into the states in the city. Well whenever a party is in power such as the Democrats or Republican efforts the party's efforts in anti-poverty are whatever you talk about in the domestic area are not given first billing. And now we are getting given

first thing the Republicans are being given first billing for such things and tax incentives to businesses. Hire the unemployed. We'll have a rise in what they call volunteer ism in America has to be a great deal of stress on that. But actually the senators in both parties Democrat and Republican putting a late Senator Robert Kennedy stress the private sector and stress the role that business should play in anti-poverty other domestic programs. Yes I do think that a great deal of discussion an emphasis on just this kind of approach. How do you sense a lot of the evidence that you will that obviously most of them are unfamiliar in but equally unfamiliar. Yes they are they're not charismatic figures but they are competent man. I think that there's been a consensus in need in American politics for the past 20 years on most issues of foreign policy social legislation and civil rights and I think the cabinet is

likely to represent a continuation of that consensus. It was finished. I would agree with Dr. Poole on that. Nixon has said that he wants a strong cabinet. I think what he really has here is as a series of deputies that you can rely on what has happened to President elect Nixon stated intent of trying to bring prominent Democrats into his administration doesn't seem to have done so. So there are a few I suppose now relatively minor appointments still to be made is he going to attract support from the opposite party. The interesting thing there is that he did try to get Democrats in the cabinet and he just couldn't line up and Shriver for a while. But one of the most fascinating discoveries of many of the press made here recently is that how few second and third level men have been replaced in this government we still have a city full of Democrats here and most them are running the

government. Mr. Nixon has not gone very deep in the replacement area on the basic problem of civil rights. So you would agree the worse problem is that they sense yet again it seems to me that President Nixon's reference is remarkably bland uses this phrase we will give light to what is in the law is a scandal that is of Negro population. No I don't think it will and I think that was probably an unfortunate statement because well it is true that the most important issues on civil rights now are not new like new legislation the very fact that he said it may focus interest and attention of the Negro population on that particular issue and I think that there is going to be a great deal of demand for a rapid forward movement. How do you see him handling this problem in practical. Well I think that his statements in the address for instance the law isn't caught up with our

conscience are part of this approach where he talks about let's have words and not so much noise. I know of that Mr. Nixon and really feels it's been so much noise about civil rights and the performance. I would I would think it would be inconsistent of him to inject a lot of rhetoric into this inaugural speech at the same time. On that question and the same time and he's inviting the country to kind of pull it off. We also you know you both made the point that there was a there was is this deliberate attempt to hound on the they the criminal in political life have President Nixon made practically no reference to the economic problem with this is again this being a deliberate and misleading. First off the United States is isn't is wallowing in prosperity right now we have some inflation and we have some balance of payments problem but the general condition of people in this country is quite good

there's been a lot of focus on the poor but this sometimes is a distortion because the vast majority of Americans are quite affluent I don't don't know what he could have said in this speech to see her. Anything in the economic area mourning because of the continuance of places in the economy that the rich really don't know what that is. Well he did say that he was interested in economic planning and didn't use that phrase I think and evaporates and I don't think it's laissez faire I think in staying with what we have and making it work which is the whole theme of the domestic program nothing new but making what we have where President Nixon made frequent it was in fact I think it would be reasonable to say this is the main theme of his speech in the one for the search for peace of America and so by definition act as a peacemaker.

What he is ready for that one for the Pacific in this is the calm of the general the Karaite awful. Clearly I think that rather than deed the main burden of the speech well there was almost nothing on domestic politics that you could put your finger on. It's quite clear that that he is saying to the world to the Soviets to our allies to the American public and the whole world that what he wants to do is move forward on negotiation rather than confrontation on reduction of armaments. It's quite striking to compare his inaugural speech with the last inaugural speech given by a Republican coming in after a Democratic administration 16 years ago General Eisenhower from a quote just a couple of sentences. He said in his inaugural that the forces of good and evil are masked and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. And he said that destiny is laid upon our country the responsibility of the free world leadership. Now the contrast between that which was the main theme of the Eisenhower speech and Nixon inaugural speech with its

main emphasis on the end of confrontation negotiation in the search for peace is very striking indeed. It is going to how do you how do you read it. I would agree with Dr. Kapoor on that I just add that I have heard Nixon say several times in recent years. Communism is changing the world has changed. He's not the mysterious fellow on the subject that he was singing 15 years ago for this and it was a mishap in the manner in which this was right that President Nixon perhaps sees this peacemaking as coming about more by way of bilateral negotiations with the US. I think that's a good assessment. I would use it. Yes I think so I think that this does not mean that multilateral discussions the United Nations and those nations between the two groups of nations in the world will not take place I think they will. But when as in the Eisenhower era the United States

felt itself that it was much more conscious of its need for Ally. So it was much much easier for Nixon today when he was to a very large extent addressing the Kremlin to simply talk in bilateral terms with this Russian officer there would come right Pacific as a day to talk on the problem of ballistic missile and nuclear problem. Does this look as if that hotline is being used a bit from its allies. I think that that is I don't know about the hotline yet I do think that Nixon and I can just put in a rather colloquial way feels that we're the big boys in the world and we very see to it that we have peace we both know what the story is increasingly I think Nixon understands where the great seats of power are in the war and this is about confrontation the Soviet thing and I'm sure it's not as big as mine is it was years and years ago we were rather unfavorably struck by the fact the president thinks

and that was the direction that I look at no time in the speech use the word. Now with this deliberate What are we to read in. Well I don't think it was deliberate I think it was as I suggested a minute ago that this didn't come to the forefront of his thinking because he was not thinking of the mobilizing of force on on one side on the side of the free world but he was and therefore reference to allies simply wasn't to say yes but it would be unrealistic to think that the United States could resolve any major problem simply by negotiation with the Russians without the involvement of the rest of the globe I think. NIXON No that certainly Henry Kissinger has been very much conscious of this over the years and very much involved in the problem of communication with the allies. I might add that during the campaign candidate Nixon deplored the decline of NATO and the difficulty was with our alliances. He deplored this in attacking the record of the Johnson administration think its image in

Washington often involves things about me.