Presidential Inauguration Videos & Text

A good find over at Metafil­ter. Here you’ll find 22 inau­gu­ra­tion speech­es, start­ing with McKin­ley’s 1901 address. There’s some great footage in this series of videos.

Along sim­i­lar lines, The New York Times has post­ed an inter­ac­tive fea­ture that cov­ers every inau­gur­al address. You can read the full text of each speech, and see which words and ideas were most wide­ly used with­in each text. It’s a quick way to see what issues mat­tered most dur­ing a giv­en his­tor­i­cal moment. Start with George Wash­ing­ton’s address here.

Last­ly, let me leave you with this. FDR’s 1933 address, which helped Amer­i­ca move with a lit­tle more con­fi­dence through anoth­er dif­fi­cult time. It’s the speech that gives us “There’s noth­ing to fear but fear itself,” a kind of pre­lude to “Yes we can.” Here’s to new begin­nings.