Ronald Reagan: First Inaugural Address

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

In his first speech as president, Reagan combined a long-term vision with a plan for immediate action. Reagan wanted to explain the convictions that shaped his political thinking—the ideas that he had embraced even before his speech for Goldwater in 1964—and that would guide his presidency. He also wanted to tell the American people that his top priority was restoring the health of the economy. When Reagan became president, the “misery index”—the total of the unemployment rate and the rate of inflation—exceeded 20 percent. Reagan wanted to show how his most basic political principles could offer solutions to the nation's economic ills, and he asked his aide Kenneth Khachigian to write a first draft of his address. While he retained some of Khachigian's ideas and words, Reagan made many changes in the original draft. What Reagan said to the American people after he took the oath of office on January 20, 1981, was thoroughly his own.

In this speech, Reagan wastes little time addressing what he calls “an economic affliction of great proportions.” He describes the corrosive effects of high inflation and unemployment, explains that their causes reach back several decades, and calls for action “today in order to preserve tomorrow.” His most important, and most memorable, assertion is that “in this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Reagan had been saying something very similar for decades. He asserts once more that government often serves its own interests rather than those of the people who grant its powers.

Although he provides no details about the economic policies his administration will follow, Reagan promises to “curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment” in order to remove “the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity.” The main problem with the economy, in his view, is that government has stifled the productivity of workers and has impeded the innovation of entrepreneurs. Reagan, in short, says that his abiding belief in a maximum of individual freedom and a minimum of government regulation would be the key to reopening the door to prosperity.

The depth and duration of the country's economic problems had demoralized many people, but Reagan, as usual, predicts a bright future. Americans, he says, control their own destiny, and it was time “to begin an era of national renewal.” He encourages his fellow citizens to “dream heroic dreams,” and he lauds the everyday heroes in factories, on farms, and in businesses. The courage, strength, and determination of the American people would eventually triumph, and he pledges that “your dreams, your hopes, your goals are going to be the dreams, the hopes, and the goals of this administration.”

Reagan also counted on the courage and commitment of the American people to protect their nation from foreign adversaries. He predicts that reform at home would strengthen America's reputation “as a beacon of hope for those who do not now have freedom.” Once more he repeats that peace is precious, but freedom is even dearer.

Reagan closes by using a keen sense of place to surmount the barriers of time and to connect past and present—the sacrifices of yesterday with the challenges of today. He notes that the inauguration ceremony was occurring for the first time on the West Front of the Capitol, which faces the monuments to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln, and, in the distance, the markers where fallen heroes rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Reagan tells the story of one veteran, Martin Treptow, whose wartime diary recorded his determination to sacrifice and endure. He used that story even though he knew that Treptow was buried in Wisconsin, not at Arlington. Reagan thought the story was too good to eliminate or to alter by mentioning the location of Treptow's grave. It provided a moving, theatrical conclusion to a speech in which Reagan asks his fellow Americans “to believe in ourselves and to believe in our capacity to perform great deeds.” Reagan thought that on the political stage, just as on the movie set, writers and performers were entitled to some artistic license.

The Inaugural Address and additional efforts to mobilize public support helped persuade Congress to pass Reagan's economic program, which reduced individual income tax rates and cut the budgets of some social programs. Reagan maintained that the tax cuts would stimulate the economy, but within weeks of their passage a steep recession began, and the president's popularity plunged. In 1983 the economy recovered, inflation declined, and when Reagan ran for reelection in 1984, his campaign commercials proclaimed that it was “morning again” in America. Economists still debate how much Reagan's tax and budget cuts contributed to the recovery and how much the monetary policies of the Federal Reserve System and the chair of its board of governors, Paul A. Volcker, were responsible for squeezing inflation out of the economy. Reagan, however, was convinced that the tax cuts were the key to the economic expansion that continued until after he left the White House. Throughout his presidency Reagan firmly held to the ideas about individual freedom, government power, and economic policy that he had expressed in his First Inaugural Address.