The Presidential Inauguration of George W. Bush

            In November, 2000, the presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore resulted in a controversial result that remains a source of cynicism more than a decade later. One of the contentious issues was that while Gore won the popular vote, Bush won the electoral college; the more troubling issue ultimately became the Supreme Court's decision that the Florida court-mandated recount was unconstitutional. As a result, Bush won the electoral votes in the state of Florida, thereby winning the election. Because a large part of the American public did not view George W. Bush as having been legitimately elected, his inaugural address was given against the backdrop of the fiasco surrounding his victory. This paper will discuss Bush's first inaugural address given in January, 2001, and will focus on the context in which it was delivered, namely that the president needed to unify the nation and promote his leadership because of the damaging way that the 2000 election was decided.
             Like all new presidents taking office, George W. Bush had to create a cohesive nation as well as define the direction in which he would be leading the country. In addition, however, Bush faced a set of different challenges because of the circumstances under which he had become president. He had to defend and legitimize a presidency that had already come under attack, and support his claim to a mandate so that he would have a basis on which to lead the country. He needed to both unify the country politically as well as to establish credibility in his leadership. In his initial address, he recognized that when he said "sometimes our differences run so deep it seems we share a continent but not a country. He acknowledged these rifts in his inaugural address and attempted to confront them by discussing what he believed were their causes: failing schools, hidden prejudices, and the circumstances of one's birth, structural problems that he rejected while pledging to resolve them in a unified way.