Inauguration Day

I hadn't planned on going downtown for the Inauguration. People infinitely better connected that I am couldn't get tickets, and even conservative estimates of the crowds made it clear that actually seeing anything other than crowds was unlikely. I briefly considered going downtown with a camera just to record the event, but hadn't made up my mind.

Monday evening, though, I was leaving for a party when we got a phone call and a friend offered us tickets. The tickets turned out to be for the parade, not the Inauguration ceremony, but that was just as well. An opportunity to bear witness to an historic event is an opportunity to bear witness to an historic event, whether one is on the West side of the Capitol, or on the sidewalk between Treasury and Old Ebbitt.

Being the Inauguration of the President of the United States, I wore grey flannel, white OCBD, blue repp tie, and a black wool overcoat. I wasn't the only one who dressed appropriately for the occasion, but I was certainly in the minority. This country really needs a national moratorium on jeans.

A native Texan, I'm not inherently opposed to denim - but everything has its place. If you paid $200 for your jeans, it doesn't make them "dressy," it just makes you a fool. And wearing jeans with a coat and tie doesn't make them appropriate for presidential occasions, either. I'm sure I'll get a lot of flak for this, but I'm okay with that. Somebody needs to say it.

Jeans notwithstanding, a lot of people were really dressed up. Maybe not to my taste, but at least they were trying to be respectful. And as Peggy Noonan rightly observed, PETA really took one on the chin. Who knew there were that many full length fur coats in the world? And not just on women!

The coolest people on the street were by far the Secret Service.They are the classiest of the law enforcement branches, I'd say. Well dressed, polite, and quiet. At one point a couple of guys came walking down the street with big bags and equipment slung over their shoulders. My wife said, "here come the cameras!" Then we noticed that they weren't news media, they were snipers.

The rooftop snipers were out in numbers. We had blue tickets, for the end of the parade route, right around the corner from the presidential viewing stand. It was clear that we were in the safest place on the planet. The atmosphere was so jubilant, though, that rooftop snipers never felt remotely threatening. People just waved and cheered them. Sort of strange in retrospect, but at the time it seemed to make perfect sense.

The weather was brutally cold, so after the president and vice president came by, we went to Old Ebbitt to warm up with bourbon and crabcakes and watch the rest of the parade through the windows. At the end of the day, I was exhausted and near frozen. But I was glad to have had the opportunity to witness up close such an historic moment.