President Obama's inaugural speech: A humanistic view of the Constitution

Obama subtly argues that the founding documents shouldn't obstruct progress

President Obama
(Image credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Much has been made of how President Obama's inaugural speech interpreted America's founding documents to justify a more liberal agenda. The promise of equality laid out in the Declaration of Independence, Obama argued, could not be fulfilled until "our wives, our mothers, and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts"; until "our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law"; until "we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity"; and until "all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm." In Obama's view, it is America's "task to carry on what those pioneers began," linking the progressive cause, as well as its vehicle in a proactive government, to that aspiration of a more perfect union first inscribed in the preamble of the Constitution.

Obama's speech certainly marks an evolution in his political outlook. In his 2004 address to the Democratic National Convention, which sparked his meteoric rise to the presidency, Obama recast American history through the prism of his own experience, captured in the line, "In no other country on Earth is my story even possible." Obama weaved the founding documents with his personal story to make the case that America's disparate elements are bound by a democratic ideal, and hence united in common purpose: "There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America." His latest speech, in contrast, was less an appeal for unity than a forthright argument for a particular ideological view, and less about himself than strengthening a liberal movement that has its origins in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and the civil rights movement.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us
Ryu Spaeth

Ryu Spaeth is deputy editor at TheWeek.com. Follow him on Twitter.