Proclamation 3589—Commemoration of the Beginnings of the Office of the Presidency of the United States

On the thirtieth day of April, in the year Seventeen Hundred and Eighty-nine, on the balcony of the Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath as the first President of the United States of America.

In the one hundred and seventy-five years since that occasion, thirty-five other Americans have sworn that same oath and entered that same office to discharge in seamless continuity the duties prescribed by the Constitution.

Individual incumbents are remembered individually according to the challenges and responses of their tenure. But the office itself has long since come to transcend its occupants. The Presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands. It has served as symbol of the spirit, purposes and aspirations of the American nation in this land and in lands far beyond these shores.

Ordained to serve a nation of fewer than four million inhabitants, the American Presidency will before its two hundredth anniversary be serving a country of more than two hundred million inhabitants, living together in the most successful society yet created and sustained on this earth.

In this achievement, it has been the will of the people that the office of the American Presidency be used in the work of perfecting our national unity, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity by seeking a world of peace, freedom and opportunity.

The office of the Presidency is, as one President described it, "pre-eminently the people's office." The President himself is, in the words of another President, "the steward of the public welfare." While it has become custom, outside the original concept of the Constitution, for Presidents to be chosen from candidacies offered by political parties, the office itself and the conduct of that office remain today, as at the inception, national and not partisan, serving all the people without regard to party affiliations or philosophical persuasions.

In the course of the year beginning this anniversary day, the American electorate will once more choose a fellow citizen to occupy the office of the American Presidency and to discharge its duties. All citizens participating in that decision will carry in their minds the memory of recent tragic events which impressed upon them and all the world full awareness of the importance of this office and its continuity for our daily pursuits and our hopes for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In this period, it will be constructive for all Americans to renew our appreciation of the functionings of our system, and to show our respect for the institutions on which our society stands by devoting to the office of the Presidency new study of its origins and history and new efforts to understand its functions and potentials within our democratic society, and by reflecting upon how this national office may be the more effective servant of our national purposes.

Now, Therefore, I, Lyndon B. Johnson, President of the United States of America, on this thirtieth day of April in the year Nineteen Hundred and Sixty-four, do hereby proclaim the ensuing twelve months a period of commemoration of the beginnings of the office of the Presidency of the United States.

During this year, let all citizens recall that on this day one hundred and seventy-five years ago the first President admonished us: "The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican model of government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."

In this spirit, then, let us during this anniversary year devote ourselves, through our appropriate organizations, societies, publications and through our public discussions, to fostering a new understanding of the First Office of the American Government and to strengthening the service of that Office in meeting our continuing challenges.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States of America to be affixed.

DONE at the City of Washington this thirtieth day of April, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and sixty-four, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred and eighty-eighth.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

By the President:

GEORGE W. BALL

Acting Secretary of State