From Lincoln to Obama, Presidents Speak of Harsh Realities in Inaugural Addresses

President Roosevelt began his presidency with the country in the depths of the Great Depression, the worst economic crisis in American history, as unemployment peaked at 25 percent. Roosevelt had been swept to a landslide victory against the incumbent president, Herbert Hoover, and used that popular mandate to announce swift and decisive action to address the crisis.

Roosevelt also used the bully pulpit to criticize those he held responsible for the failures in the economy: big business and the banks — “through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence” — and his predecessor in the Oval Office, of whom the speech was “implicit with criticism.”

Yet the president throughout the address also offered hope to Americans who were facing what appeared to be their darkest hour, providing one of the most famous maxims in the history of the American presidency.

This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

John F. Kennedy, 1961 — “Ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy’s campaign for president was dominated by the issue of the Cold War. His inaugural address mirrored that overarching theme, while also touching on the strengthening of global alliances and “a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.”

Kennedy particularly focused on the issue of poverty throughout the speech, promising aid to those “across the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery,” even when it may not be in the direct interest of the United States.

The address also produced Kennedy’s most memorable quote, calling upon Americans and the global community to serve a common good at a momentous point in history.

And so, my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Ronald Reagan, 1981 — “Government is the problem.”