1980: “A New Beginning”

Abstract

The Days in Washington, DC, preceding the inauguration of Ronald Reagan as America’s fortieth president had been frigid with daytime temperatures in the single digits. But as inauguration day —January 20, 1981—dawned the weather warmed into the 50s with even a hint of spring in the air after the long, cold weeks. For the first time in inaugural history, the president was to take the oath standing on the west side of the Capitol. Previously, the ceremony had been conducted on the more confined east side. But Reagan, with a sense of theater, would gaze down the length of The Mall, past the Washington Monument, to the Lincoln Memorial, and on to the great expanse of the American West, toward California where he had served eight years as governor. The small parking lot on the Capitol’s east front had only ever been able to accommodate a few thousand spectators. But on this day, Americans had gathered in their hundreds of thousands along the length of The Mall, spilling over onto Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues to get a glimpse of history in the making. In addition, there was more than presidential history being made that balmy January day. For 6,000 miles away in Tehran, 52 Americans—held hostage by Iranian revolutionaries for over a year—were waiting to board a plane that would finally fly them to freedom. President Carter had toiled right up to his final minutes in office to free them, but in vain. That failure seemed to epitomize the paralysis and ineffectiveness of the ill-fated Carter administration. And on November 4, 1980, the president had been swept away in a Republican landslide, the victim of the very “crisis of confidence” of which he had spoken in his infamous speech in July 1979.