Obamapalooza

(Revelers throng to the Washington Monument for Obama's swearing-in.)

A four-day weekend of high expectations came to a gleeful close Tuesday, as Barack Obama was sworn in as President of the United States. Nearly two million people crowded the vast frozen common of the National Mall to watch the brief swearing-in ceremony, while thousands who held tickets to secure areas at the foot of Capitol Hill found themselves trapped in immobile hordes. Thousands spent the ceremony trapped underground in the Third Street tunnel under Pennsylvania Avenue, after being directed there by confused police.

For the record-shattering crowds who clustered around the twenty-one Jumbotrons erected on the Mall, Inauguration Day consisted of long, meandering walks around an overzealous network of security barricades punctuated by the high emotion of the ceremony itself. Revelers cheered and booed as past presidents and cabinet nominees filed into the bleachers above the inaugural podium. Both Presidents Bush and a wheel-chair bound Dick Cheney drew thunderous hisses and boos from the excited crowd, while Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Obamas received cheers and ululations each time they appeared on the enormous screens. After President Obama finished his oath, strangers hugged one another and people openly wept. When Reverend Joseph Lowery finished his benediction with a call and response of "amen," the call was answered with triumphant excitement.

Sunday's free concert on the Mall augured Tuesday's historical turnout. Half a million people filled the grounds around the Lincoln Memorial to watch Sunday's star-studded performance, more than the entire turnout to George W Bush's second inauguration in 2005.


(Spectators filled the west slope of the Washington Monument.)



(This man came from Jalisco to represent el espiritu Azteca.)



(After the concert, people flooded the streets around the White House.)

Monday, the Mall buzzed with excitement. Visitors took turns throwing shoes at effigies of former President Bush. Throughout DC, officials put finishing touches on complex and overlapping security precautions. Buildings around downtown were searched and sealed. Groups of National Guard troops occupied street corners along Florida Avenue and took up positions outside shuttered liquor stores. The historic U Street corridor filled with visitors who flooded restaurants, clubs and bars. Dozens stood in line outside Ben's Chili Bowl.

Hours before dawn on Tuesday, attendees began the long march towards the Mall or the sidewalks of Pennsylvania Avenue. The streets around the Capitol were closed, forcing uncoordinated streams of tens of thousands into chaotic confluences that left thousands stranded. Barricades and bottlenecks corralled masses of people without clear signs or informed officials to guide them. Happily, they were in a cheery mood.


(Thousands spent the swearing-in trapped in the "Tunnel of Doom.")



(Nearly two million filled the National Mall.)



(People climbed trees and portable toilets for a better view.)


While the atmosphere was jubilant, the crowd clearly harbored resentment towards eight years of Bush leadership. As current and former government officials streamed into the bleachers on Capitol Hill, the masses on the Mall booed vociferously as George HW Bush, George W Bush and Dick Cheney appeared on the Jumbotrons. When Bill and Hillary Clinton appeared, they cheered. President Obama's motorcade, his family and his cabinet nominees received shouts of praise. When the President appeared, the cheers were deafening. After Chief Justice John Roberts bungled the administration of the oath of office, Obama delivered his inaugural address with the surety and rhetorical confidence he demonstrated on the campaign trail, promising renewed national unity in the face of two wars and global economic collapse.



(President Obama takes the oath of office beside his wife Michelle.)


After the swearing-in concluded, exiting the Mall took hours. As crowds bled away, they revealed fields of detritus amounting to more litter than all the litter ever left on the Mall combined, the Park Police said today. While people waited to clear needless and redundant barricades, they were treated to a flyover by the Marine helicopter ferrying former President Bush to Edwards Air Force Base, where he caught a flight to Midland, Texas. Once clear of Mall, crowds dissipated quickly, catching Metro trains to distant hotels, filling bars and restaurants, and walking back to their neighborhoods.

During the Congressional luncheon immediately after the swearing-in, Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Bird were taken to the hospital after Kennedy had a seizure. Senator Bird was so upset, he was also taken to the hospital as a precaution. After a forty minute delay caused by their departures, Obama left Capitol Hill in his new, highly armored limousine dubbed "The Beast." He seemed happy, despite the unfortunate interruption, and opted to walk portions of the parade route before arriving at the review stand opposite the White House. After appearances at ten inaugural balls, the President returned to the White House with his wife, where they drank champagne with a small cohort of guests.



(After the swearing-in, George W Bush took one last flight over DC.)



(The line into Capitol South Metro Station reached two blocks.)



(Many crowded the homes of local residents, eager to witness to history.)

Inaugural Security Picture Coming Into Focus

In a front-page article in Sunday's paper about beefed-up security at the inauguration, the Washington Post again missed the forest for the trees.

Based on figures compiled from the Post article, the total security presence for the 2009 inauguration will be 67% larger than for George W Bush’s 2005 inauguration, while total attendance, currently estimated to be between 1.5 million and 3 million, will be four to eight times larger. In other words, the proportional security presence at Barack Obama’s inauguration will be anywhere from half to nearly a quarter of that provided for Bush in 2005.

According to the figures reported by the Post, the FBI’s Washington Field Office will bring in a 20% larger force than is typical for an inauguration. The Park Police, which oversees the National Mall, will increase its force by 66%. The D.C. police presence, bolstered by 4,000 officers from outside the District, will be 25% larger than that at George Bush’s 2005 inauguration. Relative to this year’s expected turnout, those increases would be paltry without a massive increase in military personnel acting as security.

11,500 active duty troops will be in Washington on Inauguration Day, compared with 7,000 in 2005, a 64% jump. But if the 5,000 servicemen and women who traditionally participate in the inaugural parade are discounted as security, the size of the military’s security footprint, in real terms, will increase from 2,000 to 6,500, a 225% larger force than in 2005. According to the Post, 1,300 unarmed National Guard soldiers will bolster the ranks of 1,000 Park Police tasked with controlling the 309 acres of the National Mall. The remaining 5,000 military personnel – a full brigade – will assist “with crowd control, communications, security, medical care, logistics, weapons detection and other needs,” the Post reported.

That means Obama’s inauguration, with a substantially smaller security presence relative to crowd size, will be substantially more militarized. Given that inaugurations are exercises in symbolism, filling Washington with thousands of uniformed troops seems like a potential public relations gaff. Obama rode into office on a wave of public discontent with the Iraq War. The last time the National Guard flooded DC’s streets was 1968, during the race riots that exploded after the assassination of Martin Luther King. A militarized inauguration could evoke both.

JCCIC Asks Disabled to Think Twice About Inauguration; Ticket Holders to Arrive by 9

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies advised ticket holders to the January 20 inauguration to arrive no later than 9 a.m. The program starts at 11:30. 240,000 ticketed guests will occupy a secure zone on the western slope of Capitol Hill. Strollers, backpacks, thermoses and umbrellas are prohibited in the secure zone and all ticket holders will pass through a metal detector and receive a pat down.

1,000,000 or more people are expected on the National Mall, a grassy common that stretches from the base of Capitol Hill to the Lincoln Memorial, some two miles distant. Those attendees will be able to watch the inaugural program via ten enormous Jumbotrons. While there are no restrictions on strollers or other items on the Mall, event organizers have asked parents to consider the wisdom of bringing young children given limited space, large crowds, hours-long waits and potentially cold weather.

Additionally, the JCCIC asked people with special needs to think twice about attending the inauguration. Traffic to and from Capitol Hill and the Mall will be severely curtailed, requiring millions to either walk several miles or suffer inordinately long lines and overcrowding in Metro stations. Given the importance of Metro to the overall movement of inauguration attendees, JCCIC’s decision seems a thinly veiled plea for the disabled to get out of the way.

Abrahamapalooza 2.0

First he settled on following the tail leg of Lincoln’s whistle stop tour to the 1861 inauguration, deciding to travel by train from Philadelphia to Washington January 17, 2009. Now Barack Obama will swear his allegiance to the Constitution on a bible once owned by the sixteenth president, the Presidential Inaugural Committee announced yesterday.

Owning to a combination of Obama’s personal admiration for his predecessor and a knack for political showmanship, the 2009 inauguration will be full of nods to Lincoln. True the men have something in common. Both were adopted sons of Illinois who began their careers in Illinois state politics. Both were long shot candidates, political outsiders often ridiculed for their backgrounds, appearances and lack of the traditional presidential trappings. But much of the Lincoln-Obama parallel results from circumstance and shrewd stagecraft.

Obama has chosen to arrive at his inauguration on a train from Philadelphia, after a stop in Baltimore, as Lincoln did in 1861. Obama will take the oath of office with his hand on Lincoln’s bible. During Obama’s swearing in on the west steps of the US Capitol he will look across the National Mall to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King gave the most important speech of the civil rights era forty-five years ago.

If any theme has predominance in Obama’s nascent presidency it is reconciliation. He has stocked his cabinet, as Lincoln did, with rivals. He has reached across party lines, inviting prominent Republicans to join his cohort. In the selection of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, Obama showed that embracing the evangelical right at least symbolically was worth alienating an important and influential part of the left.

The inauguration is our first glimpse at what the Obama presidency will be like, apart from the bluster and promise of the primary and general elections. It is the first fruit of Obama policy. In the choice of Lincoln as a symbol and a role model, Obama promises to follow ideals rather than political expediencies. Hopefully he can live up to that promise.

Towards a Final Tally

Guessing how many people will attend Barack Obama’s inauguration in just under a month is quickly becoming the most popular parlor game in DC. Backing away from previous estimates that as many as 6 million people could flood the city for the January 20 festivities, city officials revised their projections downwards in an article appearing in today’s Washington Post. But new figures of 1.5 to 3 million are drawn from maximum capacities of DC’s metropolitan area transportation infrastructure, not demand. In other words, the new figures reflect how many people may actually make it into the city for the swearing-in and subsequent parade, but not how many people may try.

The Post article reveals that original estimates of 4 to 6 million came from projected demand and did not reflect infrastructural capabilities. Much like the German army’s Schlieffen Plan in World War One – which put more troops in motion than roads and trains could physically carry – these early projections appear to have originated with haphazard reasoning based on little more than holding a wet finger in the political winds. While officials are cutting those estimates by more than half, their new figures do not account for what will happen to any excess of people who come to the DC area during the inauguration weekend but are left stranded outside the city due to insufficient road and rail capacity.

In an augury of just how little officials know about inauguration turnout, the Post story repeats City Administrator Dan Tangherlini’s fallacious reasoning that the final number can be estimated by accounting for Metro’s 1.2 million person capacity. Metro is not an indicator of turnout as a Metro rider must already be in the DC area to use Metro in the first place. How many people can ride the subway doesn't reflect how many people will try to come to the city. Furthermore, while suburban residents from Maryland and Virginia may use Metro to reach the inaugural festivities, the 1.2 million figure also accounts for visitors who reached the Washington area by other means.

Calculating those numbers is easier.

500,000 people are expected to arrive on 10,000 chartered buses – half of the total number of charter buses east of the Mississippi. An additional 500,000 are due to arrive at National, Dulles and BWI airports. 75,000 are slated to arrive on Amtrak. 580,000 people live in the District. 5.3 million live in the Washington Metropolitan Area. While these projections, drawn from ticket sales and bus charters, appear relatively stable, several important variables remain unknown that could radically alter the final attendance numbers.

Perhaps the most important is car travel. AAA told the Post that three-quarters of tourists visiting DC arrive by car. But with bridges closed to private vehicles and large swaths of the city closed to traffic for security, it is anybody’s guess how many people will try to drive into the city or to outlying park and ride areas. If anywhere close to the three-quarters figure holds true in this case, upwards of 3 million people could be stalled in gridlock on the complex system of interstate surrounding the nation’s capital. How many would-be drivers actually make the inauguration is anyone’s guess.

The next most important factor is weather. If January 20 is a clear, relatively warm day, hundreds of thousands of residents living within a few miles of the National Mall may walk to the inauguration, swelling the total numbers substantially. DC is a Janus-faced city. On the one hand, it is Wonkdom – home of legions of federal bureaucrats who live and breathe politics. On the other, it is Chocolate City – historically and culturally one of the most important black cities in America. In a testament to his political charisma, Obama has sent a bolt of electricity through both enclaves. Decent weather could bring out Washington area residents in huge numbers.

Finally, one must account for interest. While people who already purchased tickets are unlikely to scrap their plans, visitors planning to drive from east coast cities and residents of surrounding suburbs and exurbs looking at a potential meltdown of mass transit services may opt to stay home and watch the inauguration on TV. That decision is affected by a complex and fluctuating political energy. Obama attracted record numbers during his close primary fight and election battle. Inauguration turnout may measure whether the Obameter is already starting to settle towards a new reality.

JCCIC Releases Inaugural Lineup

The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies has released the inaugural lineup.

After musical selections from the Marine Corps Band, the San Francisco Boys Chorus and the San Francisco Girls Chorus, California Senator Dianne Feinstein will call the inauguration to order and present welcoming remarks.

Controversial evangelical pastor Rick Warren will then give the invocation. Musical legend Aretha Franklin will perform after Warren.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens will then administer the oath of office to Vice President-elect Joe Biden.

Musical selections from Hollywood composer John Williams, performed by Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill, follow Biden’s swearing in.

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts will then administer the oath of office to President-elect Barack Obama. Following his swearing in, Obama will give his inaugural address.

Poet Elizabeth Alexander will read a poem after the newly minted President concludes his remarks. Following her Reverend Joseph Lowery, of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, will offer the benediction.

Finally, the US Navy Band “Sea Chanters” will perform the National Anthem with the accompaniment of a record shattering crowd assembled at the foot of the US Capitol.