Message To Obama: Don’t Read Too Many Of The Early Inaugurals

From Senior Producer Tom Nagorski…

We (Charlie Gibson, mostly) have been reading the inaugural speeches given by Barack Obama’s predecessors in the White House. It is, by and large, a fascinating, edifying exercise. Having said that, you can get bogged down in, say, the third-to-last paragraph of John Adams’ only inaugural, given on March 5, 1797:

"On this subject it might become me better to be silent or to speak with diffidence; but as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth…" That sentence — 62 words of which you just read — actually runs to 736 WORDS. Whew. Of course very few people heard that speech. And no one blogged about it.

Anyway — if you read enough of such lofty language, it can improve (or infect) your own discourse. Here’s our head writer’s stab at a lead for tonight’s broadcast, written in the pen (quill?) of John Adams:

"I bid you a pleasant eventide. Inspectors representing the 13-colony Assemblage of Transport reported on the morn that the flying vessel with 150 of our fellow citizens collectively gathered, did indeed happen upon some geese of the variety which we have witnessed heretofore coming from the northern regions, thus explaining the inability of said craft to stay aloft beyond that which science would allow as the minimum…"