Happy Inauguration Day
This morning I replied to an email and signed off with: “happy inauguration day.” It was admittedly tongue-in-cheek. The recipient of the email was not an outspoken critic of The Donald, or even clearly a Democrat, but they are not enthusiastic about the incoming administration (for one, they work primarily in climate change policy). As a good Jew I was walking in the footsteps of my forefathers: using sarcasm to ease shared pain. As a law student, however, I’ll do what I’m trained to do and take the opposite position: maybe it is a happy inauguration day.
I knew people who were not happy about Barack Obama being reelected in 2012 (I lived in a county in Montana with significantly more cows than people, even though it was mostly mining country). I knew people who were devastated in 2004. I understand people were not thrilled in 1968. And I believe 1860 did not go very well. (Seven states had seceded before Abraham Lincoln took the oath, also Abe had apparently grown a beard after winning the election in response to a request from an 11 year old girl, making his inauguration the first time he appeared in public with a beard, and the first time any president had substantial facial hair). But this inauguration feels like the most contentious in my memory, and, with the hopefully-obvious exception of 1860, perhaps the most contentious in American history. President Trump has the lowest approval rating of any incoming President in the last forty years. By my last count roughly 57 Democratic congresspeople were boycotting the festivities. There are 200 buses registered to bring citizens to DC to watch President Trump speak. There are 1800 registered to bring citizens to DC to protest his presidency the very next day.
But here’s what’s happening in Gambia right now: the outgoing President, after losing an election late last year, has refused to step down after 22 years in power. Troops from various West African states, with the backing of the UN, are waiting anxiously after crossing Gambia’s borders. Gambian citizens are waiting anxiously to see if their country becomes another African nation engulfed in a civil war.*
There is no such anxiety here, and, brash and still troublesome statements made during the campaign aside, there never was. That is a privilege. Considering the remarkable power held by US Presidents, it is also a remarkable achievement in the context of history. Until we are forced to watch a President parade through the capital while throngs of terrified citizens pretend to cry in joy over their patriotic fervor, I am going to celebrate inauguration day as something that genuinely exhibits what I love about this country. With the exception of the inaugural prayer, and the fact that everyone swears on a bible,** inauguration day is a secular celebration of good governance: different people coming together to determine how best to manage collective affairs. I think that is worth opening a beer for (though I imagine many of you were opening beers already, for various reasons).
For all of the Orwellian-irony that accompanies government-certified protesting, I think that should generally be celebrated as well, even if I am admittedly skeptical of the Democratic lawmakers who are boycotting. The low hanging fruit is hypocrisy, that Democrats would not quickly be turning the other check if nearly 60 Republican lawmakers sat out Barack Obama’s inauguration. But, you might say, Barack Obama won the popular vote by historic margins and Trump, well, didn’t. Still, that does not make him “illegitimate”. No one is seriously contesting that Donald Trump won the electoral college, or that winning the electoral college is how we pick Presidents. The discrepancy between the electoral college and the popular vote in 2016 may be a stark example of how un-Democratic an institution the electoral college is. And that may be a good or bad thing, but that conversation does not have bearing on whether Trump should be on that stage today. Boycotting the inauguration seems like the political equivalent of paying your parking ticket in pennies. Your action does little to actually subvert the system which you are protesting aside from making it more frustrating. Furthermore, as much as Trump, who clearly thinks in crowd sizes, may feel differently, this is not a celebration of a man. Or at least it does not have to be. To paraphrase a point made by Mike Pesca, by boycotting an inauguration a congressperson sort of makes the event more about the incoming President, and less about the good governance we all should be celebrating.
Growing up, my father — an otherwise health-conscious doctor — would buy large amounts of Kentucky Fried Chicken for every Super Bowl, and we would watch as a family. One year, he went so far as purchasing a generator after a week without power because another day would mean missing the big game. We are not a sports family. I doubt my father watched a single regular season or even playoff game leading up to any of these championships. I remember at one point in my childhood being a “Dolphins fan” (I grew up in New England) because the colors of the jersey were cool and I liked dolphins. I have always thought of it as a secular holiday. And like regular (Jewish) holidays, there is a lot I did not understand or even like. But it was an offering at the altar of having some shared cultural values with the rest of a country that otherwise celebrates a lack of shared cultural values, or at least should.
It is in that spirit that I will celebrate this inauguration. It is a day for appreciating our relative stability, and the fact that we should strive to manage society for collective good without aggregating power in a single person. It may be especially important that we celebrate that today, with or without fried chicken.
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*As much as this piece is about patting ourselves on the back for peaceful transfers of power, I want to explicitly distance myself the rhetoric, often implicit, of “aren’t we just so much more civilized than [X People in the Third World].” There are a lot of factors that have led to political destabilization in Africa, and I have no business ironing all that out. I just happen to have been following the Gambian crisis, and by virtue of it happening literally right now, it does present a workable foil to current events in the United States. On a happier note, this piece in the Economist explains that civil unrest in Africa has actually improved tremendously since the end of the Cold War. And on an even happier note, while I wrote this in the morning, it seems that by the afternoon there are some reports that Yahya Jammeh, the hopefully outgoing President, does plan to step down.
**Not all Presidents took their oaths on bibles. Teddy didn’t. And John Quincy Adams refused and instead took his oath with a hand on a book of US laws.
