Barack's Inauguration

Versions of this op-ed were published in the West Branch Times and the Marshall-Wythe Press (print only).

WASHINGTON—As Barack Hussein Obama II took the oath of office as the nation’s 44th president, becoming the first African-American to lead the free world, more than a million people gathered on the National Mall to experience the ground-breaking moment.

Fewer than 250,000 of those people had tickets to the Inauguration and stood within a half-mile of the Capitol as the swearing-in took place. Thanks to the Office of Senator Tom Harkin, I was fortunate enough to be one of them.

From where I stood in the Silver section, accompanied by two friends from Iowa, I could see the stage where Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. administered the oath to Obama, but I could not see the faces of the two young leaders, the first men born after 1950 to hold their respective positions. We, the crowd, stood just beyond the Capitol Reflecting Pool—around which some people had camped Monday night in subfreezing temperatures to secure their spots—past the Washington Monument and all the way to the Lincoln Memorial, where Martin Luther King Jr. had delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. I could not help but notice the symbolism, that it took this event, the swearing-in of a black president, to draw a crowd so large that the marble Abe, who delivered us from slavery, could bear witness.

My friend Kristy, who works in Washington, her friend Mary and I departed Kristy’s house in Capitol Hill at 7:30 a.m. The night before, we had debated whether to leave for the Mall at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m., because the gates opened at 8 a.m. and we knew most people would have a tough time commuting into the city. Once we turned on the news at 7 a.m., we recognized our folly: people had boarded the trains from all parts of Maryland, northern Virginia and D.C. at 4 a.m. Already, the Metro parking lots were full and soon the Mall would be, too.

I was immediately struck by the diversity of the crowd, and I could not help but feel the energy of the day. It was cold—about 30 degrees with a brisk north wind, creating a demand for hand and foot warmers that was filled with a steady supply from street vendors. “Just five dollars!” they shouted. As we navigated the hordes of people to find our designated line, both the urgency of the day and the temperature of the air pushed us all together—black, brown, yellow, red and white, just as Reverend Joseph Lowery said in the benediction.

Most of us lost cell service in the morning, and the day was all the better for it. One woman asked a traffic cop, “What street is this?” “That’s Constitution,” he replied, “and that’s Independence.” Already flustered at 8 a.m., she asked him, “Is there a less crowded way?” The cop just laughed and shook his head, and so did we. Later, a woman who described herself as “vertically challenged” held a digital camera high above her head to take pictures, then glanced at them in the camera’s display to see what was ahead (more people). A tall man, probably about 6-foot-8, offered his own assessment. “I think I see Reverend Wright!” he exclaimed, and about 100 people burst into laughter.

While standing in line for the Silver Gate, I had one of those Iowan moments, the kind where you strike up a conversation with a total stranger until you find your common ground. I noticed a man’s stocking hat, black with white piano keys around the rim. I told the man that until that day I thought my dad possessed the only such hat in the world, and the man responded that he had thought the same of his own. He said that it was quite a remarkable hat—wearing it, he had run a marathon, been filmed in a movie, and now attended Barack Obama’s Inauguration. His friend, Kevin, noticed my less significant Hawkeyes hat, and asked if I knew anyone from the Cedar Rapids area. I told him my two brothers live there, and that I graduated from Cornell College. He asked if I knew his aunt, who's a professor at Cornell. I told him that she had taught me Spanish 205 when I was a college sophomore. Kevin and I laughed, and his friend took our picture. “It was all because of the piano hat,” he said.

Once we got to the Mall, around 9:45 a.m., we took our spots about 100 yards from a Jumbotron with closed captioning and speakers, without which we would not have seen or heard what was happening. As the dignitaries arrived, the giant screen displayed them and the crowd reacted accordingly. I chuckled as a largely left-leaning crowd (OK, including me) booed a black man (Clarence Thomas), a pastor (Rick Warren) and a man in a wheelchair (Dick Cheney, who had hurt his back the previous day moving boxes). During Warren’s invocation, more than a few people turned their back to him; I saw two such people holding upside-down triangles of pink cloth, symbols of gay acceptance once used to identify homosexuals in Nazi concentration camps. Still, the biggest boos were reserved for Joe Lieberman, the former Democrat who endorsed Obama’s opponent and spoke at the Republican National Convention. Apparently Obama’s supporters have forgiven John McCain, because the crowd remained mostly silent for him. There were big cheers for Obama’s endorsers: Oprah, Colin Powell and Ted Kennedy.

As Barack and Michelle took the Capitol stage, the crowd alternated chants of “Yes we can!” and “O-ba-ma!” The Inaugural speech was well received, and most people left the Mall when the new president finished, even if there was more to the official program.

As we waited to exit, though, it seemed there was one bit of business remaining. A short man in an orange coat informed us of an Inaugural tradition: after the event, the outgoing president would take off from the Capitol in a helicopter. In the Jumbotron, I saw the propellors start. When George W. Bush had come to the stage for Obama’s speech, many in the crowd had sung, “Na na na na, hey, hey, hey, good-bye,” and we wondered aloud if the 43rd president could hear them. As the helicopter rose into the sky, the people cheered and one shouted, “Good riddance!” The man in the orange coat gave the departing president a one-fingered salute. A middle-aged black man standing with his teenage son turned to me and said, “In all my life, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

(Click here for photos of my trip to the Inauguration.)