It is mid-November, and every aficionado of presidential speechcraft knows what that means: the issuance of the Thanksgiving proclamation. This is a rare and wondrous species of rhetoric. It is homiletic and hortatory; historical and political; admonitory and prayerful. In it, the president has a chance to honor some aspect of the past; take stock of the present; press a partisan point or two; and — without controversy — wax unabashedly religious. Many of the proclamations still astound for their beauty and power; others are more perfunctory and forgettable. But they never fail to be interesting, and to reveal something of their times and their authors.
The first proclamation came from the first president, at the behest of the first Congress. Here, as elsewhere, Washington set the standard. He invited Americans to “unite in rendering… sincere and humble thanks” for, among other “signal and manifold mercies,” the “course and conclusion of the late war.” John Adams continued the custom, with long and erudite proclamations, resonant of the Book of Common Prayer, with dashes of the Federalist Papers thrown in. Jefferson demurred entirely, believing the proclamations beyond the purview of his constitutional powers. This might be expected from a man wracked with guilt over the Louisiana Purchase, but, still, the Jefferson proclamations would be among the glories of the form.
Lincoln’s are indeed glorious. They recall everything that was sublime and ingenious about that president. Remarkable about the proclamation for 1863 is that it celebrates the ordinary rhythms of American life, ongoing despite a ” civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity.” (“Needful diversions of wealth and of strength… have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements … “) The 1864 proclamation begins, “It has pleased Almighty God to prolong our national life another year” — quaint-seeming now, perhaps, but no certain proposition then. The Reconstruction proclamations-of Andrew Johnson, of Grant — appealed fervently for the healing of grievances.
Proclamations of Thanksgiving Day reflect, appropriately enough, the presidents issuing them. Theodore Roosevelt’s are like him: virile, learned, no-nonsense. (“We live in easier and more plentiful times than our forefathers, the men who with rugged strength faced the rugged days.”) Wilson’s are quintessentially Wilsonian, the work of a master rhetorician — the minister’s son, the Princeton wizard-in full command of language religious and political. (“God has in His good pleasure given us peace … It has come as a great triumph of Right. Complete victory has brought us, not peace alone, but the confident promise of a new day as well, in which justice shall replace force and jealous intrigue among the nations.”) Hoover’s are models of spare eloquence. In the teeth of the Depression, the former food administrator, vilified as indifferent, poignantly implored Americans to ” remember that many of our people are in need and suffering from causes beyond their control.”
FDR used the proclamations of his first two terms to spread the gospel of his new civil religion. We can fairly hear that matchless voice as it speaks the locutions of the day: “the goal of mutual help”; “the new spirit of dependence one on another”; a “closer fellowship of mutual interest and common purpose.”
Kennedy’s most memorable proclamation came in 1963; it had to be read by the new president, Lyndon Johnson. Possibly the sauciest line of any proclamation occurs at the beginning of Johnson’s for 1968, that ghastly ” year of the ramparts”: “Americans, looking back on the tumultuous events of 1968, may be more inclined to ask God’s mercy and guidance than to offer Him thanks for his blessings.”
A Carter proclamation tends to bring to mind the worst of the Carter style: reproachful, guilt-mongering, malaise-infused. With Reagan, the theme is freedom. Here is a dose of pure Gipperism from 1981, amid the budget wars: ” Long before there was a government welfare program, the spirit of voluntary giving was ingrained in the American character.”
Bill Clinton? It will shock no one that last year’s proclamation was pointedly political, well beyond the norm for this forum. It featured a plaintive call for “meaningful work experience” (i.e., not “McJobs”) and ” protective health care” (i.e., the sprawling, repudiated plans of the first lady).
The Thanksgiving proclamation has entered its third century. In recent decades, it has become a little more ordinary, a little less stirring, a little less compelling. That may have to do with the loss of religious rhetoric, once a prized art; it may also have to do with the diminution — sometimes belittlement — of eloquence generally. But, taken together, the proclamations make for a feast — of history, of the presidency, of speech. And all who dine there, do so with pleasure.
Jay Nordlinger
