It's...... "doug's site's Quadrennial Presidential Inaugural Special"

I'd like to review some highlights of four American Presidents and their Inaugerations

This is footage from the March 4, 1897 Inaugural of William McKinley.  It's probably the earliest surviving footage of an American President coming into office. (The narrator obviously was added to the footage probably in the 1930''s. He's kind of a smart-aleck if you ask me.)

McKinley was Governor of Ohio, and the political "creature" of Ohio "Boss" Mark Hanna, a king-maker who matched up the money to the candidate---kind of like Karl Rove was the GW Bush.   In those days it was considered unseemly for a politician to openly go about the country campaigning for President.  So McKinley, after being nominated at the Republican Convention, campaigned from the "front porch" of his home in Canton, Ohio. Usually the only clue voters had to how a Presidential Candidate might run the country came from brief speeches and open "letters" that wound up  printed in newspapers. 

McKinley is best remembered for his role in promoting war with Spain over freeing Cuba, or making it an American sate-lite, take your pick.  This led to The Spanish-American War, in which the United States gained control of the Phillip-pines and  Guam in the Pacific (Hawaii had been annexed in Grover Cleveland's term in 1894). Also Porto Rico and Cuba fell to the American flag.  Cuba was granted a nominal independence in 1903 and American-soldiers fought against Philippines "Insurrectionists" and killed thousands of them in the course of making an outpost of Empire out of the archipelago that the Japanese tried to steal from us after we stole  it fair and square from the Spanish.  McKinley was assassinated a few months into his second  term by a self-proclaimed-anarchist named Leon Cogololz, at The Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York.  He died of his wounds from the assassin's bullet about ten days later.

Theodore Roosevelt became President after that.  "Teddy" was the leader of the-irregular "Rough-Riders" in Cuba, of course.  He charged up Kettle Hill, not San Juan Hill in Cuba, while his men crawled up. He became a national hero. It was a bloody war, but more Americans died in hospitals from disease in Cuba than Spanish bullets. The "Yellow Press" of William Randolph Hearst and his "New York Journal"  had exploited anti-Spanish feeling for years before so the public was ready to join the European nations in spreading war for national "honor" (i.e., getting richer off creating colonies). 

 Many historians cite Roosevelt as the man who had started the Spanish-American War in February of 1898 (as a then assistant Secretary of the Navy) by sending the American fleet from Hong Kong to Manila.  The Secretary of the Navy was out to lunch when Theodore sent the cable to Admiral Dewey.  Some might say Teddy was "out to lunch" himself, but perhaps it can be said he only lit the fuse and the dynamite had been planted already by others.

  Dewey's ships smashed the Spanish Naval forces in Manila Bay.  All that was left was to send the Marines and the Army in to capture Manila and then attack the  Philippine citizen army, who mistakenly thought they were going to be liberated.

  Three years later Roosevelt had gone from assistant secretary to Governor of New York to Vice President in March 1901 and on to President!   

Mark Hanna, the old king-maker, was quoted as privately saying, "Oh no, that damn cowboy is President!"                    

Here's an item that doesn't have to do directly with an Inaugural "per se" but does show how a President could use a new medium--recorded speech, probably on a cylinder--to get himself elected. This is a recording of  Woodrow Wilson making a speech against "The Trusts"-- those big business hounchos who held the American economy in their grip --during the 1912 Presidential Election.  (This is interesting to me because I had never heard Wilson's voice.) Wilson became only the second Democrat since the Civil War to each the Presidency, running as an economic reformer.It was Wilson who championed the creation of a Federal Reserve Agency to lend some government control to monetary affairs in 1913.  He's better remembered for leading America into World War I, the backlash of which turned many Americans off to its new role as a responsible world power and doomed his plans for US participation in the League of Nations.

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And here is some rare color footage of Theodore's fifth cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Swearing-In Celebration for his third term as President in January in 1941. I'll bet those World War I-era tanks seen in the parade didn't exactly have the Germans real scared about America getting into the war.  

And here's an actual swearing-in ceremony, taken from the 1977 Inaugural of Jimmy Carter, the one-term governor of Georgia who was elected President.  Some might say this was the first of very few highlights to his presidential career. Well, he had a good 40 seconds to start off at least.