Inauguration Day Out: Close-Up at BarackStock '09

| Print Post This | Like (0) | Comments (1)

"WE JUST HAVE to get through this gate — that's when we'll get to the seats," said a soon-to-be-disappointed member of the crowd mashed up next to the Silver Gate on Independence Ave.

They may have been the tickets furthest from the action — and there were emphatically no seats — but they were tickets, and that put all of us ahead of anyone relegated to the back of the Mall. We clutched them, though occasionally men in uniform would ask us to wave them in the air, and we did oh-so enthusiastically. We'd all been out in the cold for more than three hours by then, and many of us had tromped through tunnels and been given wrong directions by uniformed officers, but we were still palpably excited. After all, we had tickets.

When the guards waved us through the gate — without a glance at the tickets; anyone could have walked in — we came to a stop a little west of 3rd Street. This is close enough to see the Capitol, but not close enough that anyone could discern Barack Obama from Justice John Roberts. We mostly relied on a well-placed jumbotron with slightly off-sync audio.

And at this, the dawning of a new era of civility and decency, it became clear that neither was in the air.

An inauguration is an occasion of hope, of transition and of respect. This crowd was excited for Obama, certainly, but almost as vocally they were out for blood. They booed John McCain, Cindy McCain, Barbara and George Bush, Dan Quayle and, of course, our outgoing president and his wife and daughters. Bush's appearance on the jumbotron caused so much outrage that even some die-hard Democrats felt embarrassed about the conduct of the crowd. When a smiling Cindy McCain appeared, only to be hissed at, shouts of "Leave her alone!" rang over the disapproval. At one point, the jumbotron made a series of quick cuts between Michelle Obama and President Bush, leaving the crowd confused about when to cheer and when to boo.

The audience was less reverent and more vocal than you normally see at state occasions. When Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman played John Williams' unparalleled arrangement of "Simple Gifts," two women felt it necessary to express their concern that if Barack Obama did not take the oath by noon that George Bush would try to use it as an excuse to take a third term. "I love me some Yo-Yo Ma," one said, "But I want to see a hand on the Bible."

A girl who had shoved her way into a tree and was hanging precariously over the crowd, screaming "Oooooooooobaaaaamaaaaa" at irregular intervals, seemed to make it her mission to drown out the music. But one woman told her 10-year-old daughter to close her eyes and "make sure you remember this moment."

While Pastor Rick Warren was met with hisses when he approached the podium, he had much of the crowd praying with him by the final moments. Though that's what happens when you end your speech with something everyone knows by heart, so it may not have indicated the audience's involvement as much as a learned urge to repeat the "Lord's Prayer." As a man standing nearby said: "Our father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy — hey, look at the squirrel!"

But after all the shuffling and the impatience, Obama took the oath and gave a speech calling the American people to service. He spoke without notes, reiterating as he so often has, that times are tough and that Americans will need to show their mettle to get through this and preserve the American ideal. And the crowd went wild. This was not the same unabashed, wild-eyed joy that infected D.C. on election day, but a more thoughtful happiness. The crowd still screamed, "Yes, we can!" to show they understand that "Yes, we did" hasn't happened yet. "We did" is not electing a black president. "We did" is fixing America.

Though much of the crowd made tracks as soon as Obama had finished speaking — though it's hard to imagine even that helped them avoid the crush of people right outside the security gates — Joe Lowery made the remnants of an audience (and President Obama) laugh with his entreaty to work toward a moment "when brown can stick around ... when the red man can get ahead, man."

The crowd outside was mashed together, but everyone — even those on deadline — was cheerful. One woman, when asked about the elaborate veiled hats decorating her head and her daughter's, responded: "A great occasion deserves a great hat."

Photos by Fiona Zublin/Express