Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Sights, sounds and thoughts from the inauguration
As I rose early Friday morning to head for the inaugural in Washington, D.C., I remember what the famed etiquette columnist for the Washington Post, Miss Manners, said about inaugurals: Think of them as college football weekends where you spend most of your time with a lot of people you don’t know and who are likely to jostle you and spill drinks on you!
The inaugural of the 45th President, Donald J. Trump, was no exception. (I did not know the ‘J’ stood for John until today!)
Basically no matter what the level of your access to the ceremony, first you walked, then you stood in line to stand in another line, talked to those with you in the line about what state they were from, and watched the gray skies to see if it indeed was going to rain. Which it did very lightly from time to time but never enough to disrupt the event. I put my compact umbrella up perhaps three times only to fold it up minutes later.
And it has rained before. I remember having a big umbrella (not allowed in the tense security environment of today) at one of the Bush inaugurals. Speaking of security, it is reassuring and fairly impressive to see the security presence of many different police units, National Guard, TSA, and even Border Patrol on display all around the inaugural. Even at the Maryland Metro station where we had chosen to enter D.C. after driving down that far. What we gave up in terms of easy access and movement having arrived in the Capitol area, was gained by sensing that we were indeed in a security “envelope” which extended, I’m told, for 100 square blocks.
An inaugural is a happening which is more important because you were there, and moreover you can always afterward say you were there, than because of the moment-by-moment occurrences. While the hardiest
of the hardy revelers were preparing to go to one of the three inaugural balls, we were having pizza at Uno’s in Union Station before boarding the Metro to begin our day trek home.
Counting Friday, I’ve been to six of them and each one has its own themes and chemistry. Inaugurals take place in the social and political context of the time. All around the Mall in Washington were occasional splashes of anti-Trump sentiment in a sign being held or a vocal burst, but the feeling of most people there was — whether high party official or grassroots Trump supporter from Michigan — to participate in “crossing the finish line” of a race in which they had run.
For most, they were likely to see the ceremony itself either at a great distance, or for those in range, on one of the Jumbotron screens which showed things close up. I heard someone remark, as the crowds streamed out afterward, “we could have seen this better on television!”
It is hard to describe this type of event to the reader at home, but here is
my take on it.
It was cold, but not really freezing, and misty, but not a rainstorm. I can remember one of the Reagan inaugurals it was absolutely so cold that the oath was taken inside the Capitol, and the parade became an indoor performance at an arena out in Maryland, so the many marching band members would not have frozen fingers and lips.
The parade Friday included military, college and high school bands too numerous for me to count. Among them was the New York Military Academy, where President Trump attended, and one of the
most popular was from the Talladega College, which had drum majors, majorettes, a huge band with a large drum section that was almost ear-shattering.
The President and First Lady stood by themselves on the Capitol steps for quite a while saluting the bands, reminiscent of the night before when I was watching television and they had visited the Lincoln Memorial at the Welcome Concert.
They don’t seem to mind being the absolute center of attention for extended periods of time. One of my new friends waiting in line told me the
Thursday night Welcome Concert was fun and entertaining, but that the crowd was entirely different from today. By which I think he meant it was a younger, more energetic, crowd than that drawn to the inaugural itself.
The inaugural of Donald Trump is perhaps one of the most unusual simply because his incredible journey to the oath of office on the “West Front” of the U.S. Capitol. That is the side facing the Mall, and only in the most recent times has it been held on this side, so much more visible and accessible to crowds. Trump’s starting gun was his descent on the escalator of the Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his candidacy. How many of us actually thought he would make it? I didn’t, and virtually all of the insider political class was right there with me.
As I have talked with the strangers with whom you quickly become friends, supporters of Donald Trump’s rise to power, there still lingers a sense of “how is this happening?” And to opponents to whom I’ve talked recently, it is even more true. One wonders if even Donald Trump himself, or his family members in high display throughout the inaugural, might be thinking the same thing!
He didn’t have any political experience. He held no offices. His track record on the standard issues was (and remains) somewhat unconventional and from time to time inconsistent and spur of the moment. His personal style was part condescension toward his opponents, part insouciant personal conduct
and part his obvious feeling that he alone has the answers to the problems facing America. As the campaign unfolded, I can remember saying, well he built a mega business successfully and he has a great family, so there must be something there.
His speech Friday, delivered to an enthusiastic, swirling, HUGE crowd, was bound to be a moment in which the nation listened to what he would say, as our official President, and it was not what I or some others expected. It was a forthright, brief (sixteen minutes they say) statement of his campaign themes delivered in a declarative voice, unapologetic for some of his sweeping views on the origins of the problems of the past which now have emerged to challenge us (with past presidents and legislators of both parties just feet away), and totally optimistic in his promises for the future, such as eliminating radical Islamic terrorism or crime in the inner cities.
I had predicted to a friend his speech would reach out to those who opposed him or questioned his direction, with some memorable phrase, but instead it was really a commitment to his supporters that he was not forgetting them, or the rhetoric that brought him to this point. He ended with: “Make America Great Again and God Bless America!”