Inauguration Day
Tomorrow is January 20, Inauguration Day. Around noon, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the President of the United States. I know for many of you, that moment cannot come soon enough. Even among those who didn't vote for the president-elect, the weeks between November 3 and now has been exhausting and felt like at least a decade. George Bernard Shaw said "Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough." For this country, "enough time" appears to be 78 days.
Thomas Jefferson was the first person to be inaugurated in Washington, D.C., being the first president elected after the completion of the White House. Washington was inaugurated in New York City for his first term and Philadelphia for his second, which is also where John Adams placed his hand on the Bible, a tradition started by (who else?) Washington eight years prior when he borrowed a Bible from a Masonic temple and kissed it after taking the oath. Most presidents kissed their Bibles until Eisenhower broke the tradition and merely said a prayer. Of course, Eisenhower stands alone as the only president to be lassoed during his inauguration when a California cowboy got special clearance to throw a rope around the presidents shoulders from a horse during the parade. The way things are going it's possible we'll live in a time when the President of the United States is given a ceremonial chokeslam by a prominent professional wrestler before he or she is sworn in on a Denny's menu.
Washington's second inauguration was the shortest of them all, his address included only 135 words, indicative of that executive's no-nonsense commitment to industry and resistance to pomp. The longest address was famously William Henry Harrison's at more than 8,000 words (or what I call "a warm up") which was delivered without an overcoat in a snowstorm and is rumored to be the reason Harrison caught the pneumonia that would kill him 31 days later, ending the shortest elected presidency. We are so used to seeing bundled up presidents taking the oath on the Capitol steps on chilly, grey days, it's easy to forget that Harrison's inauguration was in March, the typical time for incoming electeds. January 20 was prescribed as Inauguration Day only in 1933 with the 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Inaugurations can express the joy of governing and the cold realities of the job. Reagan enjoyed the warmest inauguration on record for his first swearing-in, at 55 degrees. Four years later, he suffered through the coldest, at 7 degrees. The remarkable march of invention and culture can be marked by inaugurations, noting the first coverage of the event by telegraph (1845, Polk), motion pictures (1897, McKinley), radio (1925, Coolidge), television (1949, Truman) and the internet (1997, Clinton). Modes of transportation have evolved with the times bringing presidents to the Capitol by train (1841, Harrison) and by car (1921, Harding). John Quincy Adams in 1825 was first president to be inaugurated in pants, foregoing the breeches of his predecessors. He was also the first president to be sworn in while not wearing a wig. Adams' father declined to be present at the inauguration of Jefferson and so Quincy Adams refused to attend the inauguration of his successor, Andrew Jackson, who, in turn, took a pass on showing up at the inauguration of the man who followed him, Martin Van Buren. It would be nearly 200 years before another living president declined to be present at the transfer of power.
In the middle of the word inauguration is the word "augure" which means to predict or portend a good or bad outcome. Look no further than four years ago at a presidency that had every chance to be successful but spent too much time dedicated to personal slights and misinformation which began, tellingly, with a notion of an inauguration day crowd that split with reality. I surely hope that tomorrow is a peaceful and auspicious day. We have been confronted with so much ugliness the last few weeks that each day brings a new embarrassing low. It isn't something to be proud of that president must be impeached, even if you think he should be. It's not pleasant to watch our elected officials play to our worst instincts and sow doubt about the patriotism of the other side. It's exhausting to see every aspect of our lives, from what we wear to where we spend time online be a political act. Politics are inherently divisive. They have a time and a place but if everything you do is political, or an extension of what politicians you support, you become a liability to your community, which depends on people living together despite their differences. How do you build goodwill if neighbors think the worst of each other (and by "worst," I mean either a Nazi or pedophile)? I've met a lot of people of all kinds of political persuasions and have yet to meet a single Nazi or pedophile. Why do we resist our common sense? People you know—people you love—voted differently than you did two months ago. I'm not willing to write them off, or the tens of millions like them as backward saboteurs. We live in the most prosperous nation in the most prosperous time in the history of the world. Just because there are fewer forces acting against our wellbeing doesn't mean we need to invent them among the people we live with. I hope tomorrow is boring. I hope the day after that is more boring still.