Showing up on Inauguration Day

I remember my first U.S. Presidential inauguration as a child living in Chicago in 1981, when the Carter Presidency gave way to Reagan’s, months after a dramatic and disastrous Iran helicopter rescue mission, which not only failed to retrieve captive US hostages, but also did little to help the already campaign-battered reputation of the outgoing President as being decent, but ineffectual. The desert winds had brought down the helicopters, someone said, but had ushered in Reagan, an inexperienced and unlikely President — a Hollywood actor who had appeared several times with Bonzo the chimpanzee in a supporting role, to whom he taught human morals. That’s what they said.

I watched it on TV with my parents. CNN was new; it had just gone on air. Fancy people got “cable” (whatever that was), someone had told me at school. You needed something special to get it, but no one was sure what that was. I watched it on ABC — the family’s favorite network channel back then, largely because, as I continued to believe for years, that Dad had a secret admiration for Barbara Walters. And also because I think Mom pledged undying fealty to All My Children every afternoon. I think that day, though, regular broadcasts had been interrupted for special programming.

I was 9 years old then, precociously politically aware with perhaps nothing else to do on a cold, Chicago winter day, on a day off school. And so I watched. I was awestruck by the ceremonial drama, the ritual pomp, the lingering transitional uncertainty everyone was talking about, the murmured misgivings, the excitement of fluttering flags, the deadpan, deferential commentary, the sense of a new era, and finally, by the end to peanut butter as we knew it. Jellybeans were to be the new peanut butter, someone said with authority on the live telecast. I loved the way news commentators could enhance the weight of the moment by a simple turn of phrase, by some grandiose pronouncement, or by just throwing out some random fact, that it made me so excited to be “truly witnessing history unfold”.

I was impressed by the solemn farewell given to the outgoing president and how the new one was welcomed with grace and dignity, a point my teacher would reinforce in class the next day, which is perhaps why I remember it. I loved the band, the uniforms of the ceremonial, unsmiling military guards. I remember invitees sitting solemnly in the cold. I remember the simplicity of the arrangements, yet the secular regality of the carpets laid out on white marble that seemed to accentuate that grand historical moment in time in which we all seemed to be suspended. I remember the wind slightly disturbing the hair of those assembled around the new President, including that of the President as he raised his right hand to take the oath. Everything seemed to hinge on what he was about to say — and yet it was the same as it had been for generations of presidents before him. So much anticipation for something so predictable. To add to the weight of the day, the hostages were released as Reagan was being sworn in. Reagan knew, but would not mention it in his speech. He would first wait for Americans to be safely out of Iranian airspace. Sounds like a pivotal scene of action cinema, looking back at it after all these years. But then again, there was now an actor in the White House.

I remember the subsequent discussions in the 4th grade at Holy Name Cathedral School the following day, about who would be/was a greater President — Carter or Reagan. Most disliked Reagan intensely, but by 6th grade most kids had turned around. There was a girl, Jennifer, I think, from Arizona, green-eyed and freckled, who suddenly said she wished Reagan would get shot. Then, a few months later when the teacher announced that Reagan had just been shot, we turned around and looked at Jennifer with awe and fear. She smiled back. It was then I realized that I had long had a crush on Jennifer. Dangerous, beautiful, freckled Jennifer, who shrugged back at us, and said plainly, “Well, I just figured it would happen one day.” The teacher switched on the TV and we saw the recorded coverage — James Brady lay bleeding face down on the pavement surrounded by a chaotic huddle of men. I can still see the flush on Reagan’s sunken cheeks, from a frozen still of a shot taken at the exact moment when the bullet hit him. I replayed and parsed that moment in my head for many weeks afterwards. It had disturbed me. We asked Jennifer if she had other predictions. She didn’t. I continued to long for her.

Now, I wasn’t even American and not very (or at all, for that matter) conversant with partisan politics, but my heart soared when the oath was done and the new President, the 40th, President Ronald Reagan Jr., was introduced to the world. I had been there! At school, we huddled around again after a few months, not long after the assassination attempt — when picture portraits of President Carter had been replaced, and those of the new President hung on our classroom walls — to watch the launch of the first space shuttle on the TV. When the Shuttle was airborne, the teacher quietly, whispered to herself that Reagan would be the greatest President and that we were now 20 years ahead of the Soviets. I didn’t expect nuns to be competitive, nor to be politically uncharitable, so the comment struck me as rather odd and unbecoming.

Many years later, when Reagan urged Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down these walls”, I was a teenager living in Moscow. My thoughts often went back to the tiny classroom of that Catholic school in downtown Chicago, mainly because my Soviet classmates wanted to know what it was “really like” to live in America. It made me into a local, minor celebrity at school to be able to offer true, first=hand, American insights. I also thought about that inauguration which I watched with my parents. Separated by time, distance and geography, the ripples from that first inauguration had caught up with me once more, and was changing everything around me. In a few more years, nothing would be the same for those kids who so eagerly tuned in ever so often to listen to my stories from America.

I have watched every Presidential inauguration since that first one, and there was no way I was going to miss today’s. There is no place on the planet that is left untouched by America. Whether through education, through a diet of Media and Hollywood, through the reach of American technology in our palms, through the wars we cringe from, we have all earned, by default, the right to be invitees to this event. And no matter what one might think of #45, or #46, or #47, I will continue to keep my date with January 20 every four years, for as long as I can…