1. Evaluative Essay The Inaugural Address

2. Assignment:
You will be writing an essay of words evaluating Donald Trump’s inaugural address.
The essay will be typed and you will be asked to complete a peer editing component before you complete your revisions and turn it in.
This essay will actually be your first major grade for the 4th six weeks.

3. How I Approached this Essay
I began with Aristotle’s
Triangle

4. Questions About Speaker
How does Trump need to present himself
in order to establish his credibility as a
President?
What challenges does he face in doing so?
How might he meet these challenges?

5. Questions About Audience
Who is his audience?
What special challenges do they present?
Is there a secondary audience?
What needs do they have?
How can he address all of these differing
groups?

6. Questions About Subject?
What are the most pressing issues facing the
country today?
Which ones should be given precedence?
What is the best way to deal with these
subjects?

7. Then I Looked at Models
Inaugural addresses are not presented in a vacuum. Every President has given one—or more-- of them. So there are some expectations for what needs to happen in an inaugural address.
We will be looking at some of the most influential inaugural addresses of the past in order to give you a standard to evaluate Trump’s against.

8. Next, I Created a Criteria for Evaluating the Address
Any evaluation should begin with a criteria.
What this means is that I should already have a list of things in mind that I think should happen.
Then as I look at the thing I am evaluating, I can judge how adequately it met my expectations.

9. How I Organized My Essay/ Introduction
The introduction needs to establish the context for the speech.
It is difficult to imagine an election more fraught with negativity than the one we just witnessed; however, the election of 1800 certainly was in the running. Jefferson's followers accused Adams of being a “hermaphrodite,” and Adams’ supporters returned the insult by claiming that Jefferson was a half-breed son of a Virginia mulatto. Things got so nasty in fact that John Adams became one of three former presidents who actually refused to go to the inauguration of his successor.

10. Premise
Your premise defines the most significant thing the President did in his speech with some indication of why he might have done so or a mention of how effective that choice was.
Clearly, Jefferson had a lot of fence mending to do when he took the oath of office in March of In order to do so, he placed major emphasis on the common values which united the country.

11. Establishment of Criteria
You will need to devote an entire paragraph to explaining what you felt needed to happen in this speech and why. Try to limit your expectations to 3-4 key things since you will have to address them in the body of your paper.
An inaugural address has multiple purposes. It is the first time that the President actually appears in his new role and sets the tone for the new administration. Consequently, the speaker needs to present himself as a leader. However, he also needs to make it very clear that he will lead the entire country—not only those individuals who supported him in the election. And finally, he needs to present a vision for the future that will help energize the population and place his personal stamp on the coming administration. Jefferson’s goals in his inaugural address were three-fold. …

12. Evidence From Speech
Once you are finished establishing the criteria, it is time to work through the speech from beginning to end.
Explain what the President did, supporting your ideas with text evidence.
Write commentary explaining why he might have done what he did.
In order to meet his goals, Jefferson puts the principles of the United States in the forefront and himself in a subservient role. He begins his speech by recognizing that the task of leading the country might be “above [his] talents” and asserting that he is “humble[d]” by the “magnitude” of the task before him. This is an interesting approach from an individual who has boldly campaigned for the job. However, Jefferson is well aware that, if he wants to be successful, he needs to reach out to the half of the population who opposed his victory. Promoting himself would only increase the bitterness that already engulfed the country.

13. Evaluation
The evaluation piece will probably be part of your commentary as you are explaining why he did what he did and how effective his choice was.
However, you will also want to sum up your paper with an evaluative statement of the speech as a whole.
It was far more important for Jefferson to focus on commonality than on divergence. This was not a time for radical new ideas—and Jefferson doesn’t offer any. It was a time for reassurance that the country could survive—and Jefferson reaffirms the possibility of the country’s “peace and prosperity” in a manner which historians often point to as being revolutionary in itself.

14. If you want to see what a finished paper looked like, go online.
The full 1000 word essay I wrote on Jefferson’s inaugural address is available on my web site. Obviously, it will be easier to establish criteria for Trump’s speech because you understand the issues better, but this will give you some ideas on how to structure your paper.