Inauguration Day

The mantle of power has shifted. 43 left the ceremony by helicopter a half hour ahead of schedule, much to the delight of the NY Times live-blogger Katherine Seelye, who reported that the crowd responded with a chant usually heard at sporting events at the conclusion to a one sided contest. No doubt she was only being thorough to include that factoid in her report. 43 has the lowest approval rating since 33 left office in 1953, so the emotion of the crowd was understandable, even if ill-mannered and boorish.



44 attempted to rise above the partisanship of the crowd and the reporters by delivering a long awaited inaugural address that would set a course for his administration. 44 has long been known for his rhetorical and writing skills, along with being a student of history. His sense of developing a motif for his presidency was evident from the moment he chose to announce his candidacy on the steps of the capitol in Springfield, Illinois, continuing through the long campaign until he rode the rails from Philadelphia to Washington DC the weekend before his inauguration.



When it came time to deliver his speech, there was little 16 there, and even less 35. 16's two inaugural speeches were framed by the cataclysm of the Civil War and didn't mention the economy of the country except as it related to the issue of slavery. 35 cast down a gauntlet in front of the Soviet bloc while at the same time offering an olive branch to avert mutual destruction by nuclear war. In spite of the fact that the previous administration had presided over not one, but three recessions, 35 made no mention of economic distress. Whether or not that played a role in the election squeaker that 35 won, I don't know. As James Carville famously said during the campaign of 1990 "It's the economy, stupid."



44 was able to garner the nomination of his party by running against the war in Iraq, a popular stance among the Democrats, if not the entire country. The issue of the war diminished as the campaign progressed as the fruits of "The Surge" finally produced a reduction in sectarian violence and elements of Al-Qaeda were eliminated from Iraq by the Iraqis as well as US troops. The financial crisis that hit the US economy in the middle of the election campaign and effectively sank the hopes of the Republicans, who were guilty by association in the minds of the voting public, was a boon to 44 and delivered the winning margin. Once again Mr. Carville's dictum was proven correct.



The speech was not the best one ever given by 44. There were a couple of dissonances that were hard to digest. In an effort to be inclusive, he mentioned Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus and non-believers--but not Buddhists? How about the Wiccans and Druids? He'll be getting a letter from the Ba'hai anti-defamation league next week. In another paragraph he spliced together all the problems he faces and outlined the steps needed to surmount them. In this, his speech was similar to the first inaugural of 42, albeit with darker war clouds and economic hardship at the core.



He tossed a bone to the netroots who bankrolled his election with contributions concealed by fraudulent credit card identities in two paragraphs: making a veiled reference to the Patriot Act, the detention of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay and the use of waterboarding he declared: "we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." That was all well and good, but wouldn't it have been simpler to state directly his intention to repeal the law and close the base, if those were his intentions? Only if he doesn't plan to do those things. Just as the close of the war in Iraq has removed the urgency of ending it, so also does the fact that the abominations he criticizes were successful in preventing new terror attacks make it safer for him to close Gitmo, while quietly transferring the terrorists to a different facility.



The speech was not a smackdown of the previous administration in a direct sense. Like all good leaders, 44 implied that there had been malpractice afoot, but nothing which was actionable in the present administration. Like the doctor who tells the patient before him that he arrived for treatment at the last possible moment, he offered a chance for cure, even though the illness is grave. He offered a critique of capitalism and the harshness of its down cycles, much as 32 did in his first inaugural address, chastising the moneychangers for their "stubbornness" and "incompetence." 44 departs from 32's script in ignoring rural/agricultural America in favor of lumping a host of problems together that he plans to solve.

The speech sounds different from the way it reads, given 44's considerable skill as an orator, at least when he has a teleprompter in front of him. Contrast that with the nail screeching reading of the inaugural poem. It was as forgettable as it was awful. Enough said.

What can one say about a nation of reporters who have collectively willed one man into office and then pretend to write objectively about him? Only that they fell over each other trying to pile superlatives higher than the once mighty World Trade Center Twin Towers, and then at the end of each piece cautioned the viewer or reader not to have too many great expectations after all. It was a day of firsts, none the least being the complete surrender of the press to the will of a politician. A fawning K. Couric interviewed 44 and the toughest question she could ask was how his smoking cessation was going. His non-response to her nagging answered the question and she failed to call him out for being evasive. This, I'm afraid, is what will pass for journalism in the next eight years. I say eight years with confidence because the only way 44 can fail to be re-elected is to be found in bed with an underage boy. Barring that, this blog will continue for another 1461 days.