In anticipation of gargantuan crowds flocking to Washington, D.C., for the inauguration of President Barack Obama, the authorities have had to take extraordinary measures to deal with the onslaught. You can't fault them for thinking through every angle and putting certain prohibitions in place in an effort to make it an event which comes off with minimal problems. But - walking into the city? No strollers? No backpacks? No umbrellas?
Increased security is now a fact of life, especially in D.C. Hundreds of thousands will be packing every available spot of the Mall, watching the inauguration taking place several blocks away on Jum
botrons. They will be able to see the Capitol from where they stand, but they won't be able to make out human beings in ticketed seats or the form of the new President as he stands with one hand on the Bible. And yet each person watching the big screens placed along the length of the Mall will have to stand in a blocks-long line and pass through security screening, anyway.Ditto for the parade; you can't just walk up to Pennsylvania, craning your neck for a glimpse of the President without first passing through a security entry point. Even then, they are going to refuse all entry to the parade once a specified saturation point has been reached along the street - meaning the entire parade route will be fenced off?
Ah, the price of watching history being made in a post-9/11 world. Sixteen years ago, I stood near the Lincoln Memorial on a cold January night for President Clinton's pre-inaugural concert. A-list Hollywood appeared then, also, and I didn't care that I couldn't see anyone famous without checking the big screen. It was just exciting being in the midst of an excited, hopeful crowd after twelve years of Reagan/Bush. Today's national mood of hope and relief was similar to that of early 1993. The youthful Bill Clinton and Al Gore were going to change Washington and the world. There were no security checkpoints back then, no cloud of a terrorist threat.
On January 20th, I stood on the Mall and watched the inauguration ceremony while stomping my feet and rubbing my hands. I took pictures of President Clinton raising his right hand on the big screen. And I also volunteered at the Presidential Inaugural Committee in the weeks leading up to the big day, tolerating the snotty, sloppy attitudes of the twenty-somethings on staff and performing menial tasks at night in hopes of snagging the prize assignment of working at one of the poshest Inaugural balls on the schedule - which, in the end, I got.
At the ball, I walked around amidst the rich and famous: Ralph Lauren, Harry Belafonte, Loretta Swit. At one point in the evening I stood at a door to stamp hands of departing guests and got to ask Dustin Hoffman if he intended on returning to the ball.
So I have had the good fortune of living in Washington and doing a quintessentially Washingtonian thing, and it was a great experience I'll remember for a long time. It may not have been as historic as this year, and it's hard to stay home, living a just a few blocks from the Metro and a five-minute drive from the Lincoln Memorial and not needing maps or subway lessons. But I'd rather not walk into D.C. (about an hour and a half to the Mall), stand in interminable security lines and wait for hours in the January cold, only to watch the inauguration on a big screen TV.
Instead, I'll be watching it on a smaller big screen TV with neighbors in a warm home, enjoying the ceremony, each other, Washingtonopoly, and good food and drink. We'll be toasting the start of a new era (and "the end of an error," as one commentator said today) and giving up our spots of the Mall for some of the hundreds of thousands of Americans travelling to our city for this event. We're glad to do it. Happy Inauguration, America!
Photo credit: About.com
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