The news anchors did a good job this afternoon making us all glad we weren't in Washington for the inauguration. They told of jammed commuter trains, road closures, folks with tickets being turned away, and mile-long lines to use a porta-potty. I suppose it would have been wonderful and inspiring if you could have gotten into the first thirty rows but the way they made it sound, it's a miracle Barack and Michelle made it in. Right now, most of the same news folks are covering the inaugural balls and telling us why we should all be glad we're not at an inaugural ball.
In between, they said a lot of stuff that pretty much came down to variations on "I never thought I'd see this day." Over on MSNBC, Chris Matthews kept saying, "Barack Obama is the President of the United States" as if the oath of office wasn't valid until that sentence had been repeated five hundred times. I heard way too much about what the new President and First Lady were wearing, and there was about a half-hour there where the networks seemed ready to roll the always-on-hand obituary tape on Ted Kennedy.
All in all, it was inspiring but uneventful. I set the TiVo to record three hours of coverage and I figured I'd burn it to a DVD and save it to watch again years from now. But I think a twenty minute clip of the oath and address would be just as good.
By the way: Yes, I know (now) that George W. Bush made that comment about spending political capital after his second inauguration, not his first. But I think the point still applies. One of the first things that soured me on the Bush regime — above and beyond the fact that its primary agenda seemed to be to do anything, including harming the lower and middle class to benefit the wealthy — was this "winner take all" mentality. The Bush definition of bi-partisan cooperation always seemed to be the Democrats in Congress giving him everything he wanted. And of course, what soured me on the Democrats in Congress was that they usually did.
I don't get that Obama is all about that. At least, the first eight hours of his presidency and the run-up to it haven't been like that. He has political capital to spend — probably more than Bush ever had. But so far, there's a nice sense of outreach, as far as he can go without compromising certain key campaign planks. His enemies are going to have a tough time demonizing this guy. I'm not saying they won't be able to do it…but it's going to take a lot of effort.
I'm going to watch Jon Stewart now and see what he has to say about it…