Pop quiz: can anyone remember any particular phrase, proposal or idea linked to President George W. Bush’s first inaugural? Political junkies may speculate that he called for “compassionate conservatism,” but most would be remembering the 2000 campaign rather than the 2001 inauguration. Probably the 2001 inauguration was most memorable for proceeding so smoothly; perhaps the defining image showed the Clintons, Gores, Cheneys and Bushes amiably but cautiously navigating the rain-slick Capitol steps, united by an all-American commitment to the rule of law, and an all-too-human fear of slipping on national television.

Had President Bush’s first term unfolded as he expected, his inaugural calls for civility, decency and, yes, compassion – he used the word not the phrase -- might have resonated. Of course, the horrors of September 11 and the unexpected war on terrorism upstaged the inaugural address, along with the rest of the first eight months of Bush’s presidency.

This lesson is worth remembering amid the orgy of post-inaugural analysis. Watching the parade of prognosticators handicapping the president’s speech, weighing its historical significance, trying to predict the historical future, few will be willing to admit that it takes years to appreciate an inaugural address’s true significance. Sometimes, that meaning changes. Four years from now, if Iraq is democratic and stable, Bush’s celebration of freedom will provide the historical peg on which to hang a celebration of his era; if, however, Iraq is a catastrophe, Bush’s words may come back to haunt him.

Still, Bush’s second inaugural made three things clear. He dismisses the now infamous values-motivated 22 percent of voters who fed media buzz that the 2004 election was about red versus blue America. To Bush the realities of September 12 remain: “it’s the war on terror, stupid.” But Bush cleverly refuses to let his mission be defined in the negative – echoing phrases from the pantheon of liberal Democrats, George W. Bush gave a FDR-Four-Freedoms, JFK-Pay-Any-Price-Bear-Any-Burden, expansive, interventionist embrace of freedom worldwide. Finally, like his model – Ronald Reagan (not his father) – Bush knows that every successful presidency is rooted in a narrative. Reagan’s story went from the chaos of the 60s and the despair of the 70s to Morning in America; Bush’s narrative began with the fight against Communism, continued with the defeat of Communism, noted what he called the “sabbatical” or years of repose during the Clinton years, and now, post-9/11 has become yet another glorious all-American fight for freedom.

Of course, what he says in the Farewell Address he expects to give in 2009 will demonstrate whether he still feels comfortable being judged by the standards he so clearly set out on Thursday.

One of the most famous phrases uttered at an inauguration may have been misunderstood. In 1801, as the United States experienced its first successful transition from a governing party – the Federalists – to an opposition party– the Republicans, the victor Thomas Jefferson said: “We are all Republicans – we are all Federalists.” These eight words became an iconic phrase in American history – signifying reconciliation after the bitter partisanship that helped Thomas Jefferson unseat his old friend John Adams. But Joseph Ellis argues in American Sphinx that in the text, Jefferson did not capitalize “republicans” or “federalists.” Thus Alexander Hamilton and other Federalists chose to hear a Jeffersonian concession emphasizing amity despite the partisanship, rather than a platitudinous acknowledgment of Americans’ common faith in a republican form of government and federal power-sharing with and among the states.

Ronald Reagan’s two inaugurations also proved to be historically malleable. In 1981 Reagan ambled into office amid a grand display of inaugural opulence. Not since the Kennedy debut twenty years before had an inauguration made such a cultural stir. The president’s thousand-dollar morning suit, the First Lady’s $10,000 gown, the $16 million-dollar inaugural price tag, the fleet of private planes and corporate jets landing at National – now Reagan -- Airport, the squadrons of limousines on the ground, the decision to mount the inauguration facing West not East, all reflected Reagan’s determination to break with the past. 

Reagan’s own conservative movement harbored an ascetic streak that recoiled at such excess. “When you’ve got to pay $2,000 for a limo for four days, $7 to park and $2.50 to check your coat at a time when most people in the country can’t hack it, that’s ostentation,” the conservative stalwart, Senator Barry Goldwater, grumbled. Radical Democrats such as Congressman Ronald Dellums agreed, blasting the “incongruity between President Reagan’s apparent call for sacrifice… and the wall-to-wall furs and limos.”

Eschewing the Carter era’s cardigans and jeans, the Reagans championed a new designer ethos – and were cheered. Americans wanted a return to glamour, as evidenced by “Dynasty’s” premiere the week before the Reagans’. Yet many establishment Democrats indulged the new president. Lyndon Johnson’s aide Horace Busby acknowledged that Reagan had a mandate to bring a “class show” and suggested that critics were “hitting the wrong button to suggest that the U.S.A. is a dried-up, resentful little country.” 

In fact, Reagan’s first inauguration helped solidify Reagan’s claim that he won a mandate from the American people to repudiate the Great Society. Analyzing the election suggests it was an “ABC election”: Anybody But Jimmy Carter, the embattled incumbent. The inauguration marked the climax of a successful 10 week campaign to transform ambiguous electoral results into authorization for action. The boost Reagan received from the inaugural, and the delight even some Democrats took in his exuberance, drowned out the critics. Four years later, Reagan’s second inaugural was less controversial – but in the long run less memorable, as the second term became defined by external events such as the Iran-contra scandal and the warming of relations with Mikhail Gorbachev’s Soviet Union.

It is possible that the presidencies of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan have followed contrasting trajectories. Reagan’s relatively clear first-term mandate, be it conjured or real, degenerated into a mushier second-term muddle, partially due to Reagan’s own all-too-sugary Morning in America re-election campaign, and partially due to the unanticipated foreign shocks. Bush seems to have gone from muddle to mandate, from an ABC – Anybody But Clinton -- contested victory in 2000, to a clearer triumph in 2004, and a clearer focus after 9/11. Of course, this formulation while elegant, might be way off - history cautions us that it is just too early to tell.