Change We Can Believe In...

So I thought I would devote my 'inaugural' post to a review of the historic events of 20 January 2009. I doubt whether anyone who witnessed President Obama's address could have helped being deeply moved by the significance of the occasion. For the history buff, the day represented an opportunity to cast the eye back over the centuries and assess the sometimes brave, sometimes faltering, first steps of past Presidents:

William Henry Harrison took the oath of office on 9 March 1841, a bitterly cold, wet day. Having chosen to wear neither a hat nor an overcoat, Harrison contracted pneumonia and died 31 days into his Presidency.

James Madison, the Nation's fourth and, at just 5'4" and 100 lbs, most diminutive Commander-in-Chief, took office in 1809. His inaugural address, a mere 700 words long, took seven hours to complete, making it the longest such address in American history. The length of the address is attributed by historians to persistent, distracting taunts of 'Where's me Lucky Charms' emanating from onlookers and passersby.

Woodrow Wilson's second inaugural address, delivered in 1917, used the phrase 'fuck y'all' forty-three times, making it the second most profanity-laden presidential address of the twentieth century.

Abraham Lincoln's inauguration in 1861 took place during a time of growing national emergency. To add to the atmosphere of trepidation surrounding his ascension to the Presidency, administration of Lincoln's oath of office was delayed by anti-abolitionist Chief Justice Roger Taney's repeated heckling. Taney is reported to have yelled 'Hey, you with the hat... Down in front' on at least seven occasions before finally fulfilling his constitutional responsibility and administering the oath.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered his stirring 'fear itself' address in 1933. What is less well known is that he did not take the middle name 'Delano' until halfway through his second term of office. Throughout his first term he was known as Franklin Cougar Roosevelt.

During the course of his inauguration in 1909, William Howard Taft consumed three legs of lamb, a suckling pig, a live rabbit and three decorative tablecloths. Taft would go on to make history, becoming the first former President to be appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Like his predecessor Chief Justice Taney, Chief Justice Melville Fuller contributed to a significant delay in the orderly handover of executive power. In 1897, Fuller demanded that William McKinley 'pull his finger' eleven times before finally commencing the process of swearing in the new President.

In 1893 Grover Cleveland commenced his second term of office, becoming the first President to serve non-consecutive terms. Cleveland's Presidencies 'sandwiched' those of Republican Benjamin Harrison. The Nation would wait until the beginning of the Kennedy administration before seeing another person ceremonially sandwiched in the White House.

The place of religious texts in the swearing-in ceremony is controversial. Franklin Pierce, stricken by a crisis of faith after his son's untimely death, refused to swear on the Bible at his inauguration in 1853, preferring to use a law textbook. Barack Obama, by contrast, took the oath on a Bible formerly owned by Abraham Lincoln. At his second inauguration in 1997, William Jefferson Clinton took the oath of office on a rare Betamax copy of 'Gremlins 2: The New Batch'.