Friday, January 23, 2009

The Inauguration of the President of the United States

I admit I had not watched all of the Inauguration; there are other matters that occupy my time, as such an ostentatious display of popular politics fills me with, if not distaste, then at the very least some unease at its scope and breadth.

I can scarce imagine the sheer quantity of those attending - estimates have the number near two million. If such a vast swarm of citizens believes it necessary to freeze themselves to death in order to hear a new President and Chief Justice each fumble the oath of office, in their turn, then I have no will to stop them, but I would remind the electorate that the flagging state of the economy requires their own personal industry to pull it together again - a goal certainly stated clear enough in Mr. President Barack Obama's inaugural address. Better that they should have stayed home and lent a good few days of work to this country than lend their voice to a crowd that certainly needed none more and could have used many fewer.

As for the address itself, I had caught an echo or two of my rhetoric, from the Declaration of Independence, which I found flattering and unsettling in equal measures. Similarly, I do not believe Mr. Paine would have entirely appreciated the quote of his used in the manner it was (especially since it was credited to George Washington, who did not write a quotable word except by the hands of Alexander Hamilton or James Madison); we suffered through many a crisis proportional to the modern threat of terrorism, and Mr. Washington indeed forced upon the country a rather dark time of trade in order to support principles over wellbeing. Principles - and inspiration - in this case seem to have been rather handily traded for unashamedly pro-American rhetoric. Inspiring, after a fashion, but in essence not much different from the President we just set aside.

All in all, I did find myself moved - forty-one men have claimed the Office of the Presidency since I stepped down - but it was due in very small part to the ceremony itself and the man assuming leadership of the country.

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