Clinton's Second Inaugural Address : Partisan Battles over `Responsibility'

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At Henry IV's coronation, the archbishop anointed the king with oil said to have been given to Thomas a Becket by the Virgin Mary (and the archbishop found the king's hair aswarm with lice). Republics, favoring simplicity, have less exotic civic liturgies - no stately ranks of bishops or oceans of ermine and silk. Republics rely on rhetoric to quicken the public pulse.

America's pulse probably stayed steady during President Bill Clinton's bland, formulaic inaugural address, but he could not expect to excite while declaring the end of political excitements.

The day before the inauguration, a Washington Post report of an interview with Clinton carried this headline: …