Presidential inaugurations: American democracy in its glory and shabbiness

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/21/presidential-inaugurations-american-democracy

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I have only ever been, and will only ever go, to one presidential inauguration. (If any of my children become president, I will make an exception.)

It was 1993, and I had made the maximum individual donation, at the time $2,000, to the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign. The invitation was my reward.

An inauguration is a celebration of the victorious. But it is not just the president's victory. Everybody there has had a little victory. Or really, everybody who has a ticket has made a financial bet that has paid off by having backed the winning president. These people, arrayed around the podium, and cascading down the Capitol steps for as far as the eye can see, represent a good chunk for President Obama of the more than $1bn it cost to get him here a second time.

In my case, I had published a book in 1992 about the US standing in the world that, I figured, might benefit from a blurb from Bill Clinton or, second best, Al Gore. I knew one of the senior campaign finance people, a man memorably named Vic Raiser. Vic told me he could not guarantee anything – except that if I did not make the maximum contribution (called "maxing out"), he could guarantee that I would <em>not</em> get my blurb.

I balanced the value of the prospective blurb against the $2,000, which was, at the time, a moderate fortune to me, and sprung for it. Doing so, I suddenly understood the pleasure of bribery, even soft bribery. It is a very clean feeling. It's a feeling of knowing how the system works. The world seems like a logical and understandable place when you know to whom to write the check.

Vic Raiser folded my check into thirds and slipped it into his wallet.

That was on a Friday. The next day, he left for a fishing trip in Canada, via a small plane, which, tragically, crashed in the far north, killing all on board.

After the shock, I considered my check. Vic was my connection. Without Vic, I was just a chump who had contributed $2,000 without a way to get something for it. So I dearly hoped my check had gone down with him.

Alas, given the money pit of a presidential race, Vic had immediately deposited it.

I did not get my blurb. But I got inauguration tickets. Actually, my then wife got them, because her name was listed first on our account. She was getting the credit, whereas I was chopped liver. This being politics (as well as marriage), it immediately became a competitive game.

Of course, we were off to Washington, each of us dreaming of our new access and political leverage. We found a cheap hotel – offering an extremely expensive inaugural package – and I bought a tux at Moe Ginsberg, the discount men's store.

This is one of the joys of politics: no matter how lame you really are, you can feel like an insider. Of course, there are always people more insider than you, which is the disappointment of politics. (I had a college chum in Washington, who had achieved some mid-level party standing and was taking us under his wing; he was particularly officious and entitled.)

There is no place better than an inaugural for realizing how much democracy is a hierarchical affair.

Our tickets put us within telescopic view of the podium. The feeling of grandeur here and ceremony is vastly enhanced by the long wait in the bitter cold. Frozen extremities give everyone enormous focus. The speech itself was well beyond reasonable audio range, but it was all, as a distant tableau, quite dignified. (I hope they haven't given in to big screen monitors since then.)

And then, it is over, and there is a palpable shift in power. Around you everywhere, the big guys are on the move: big black cars, motor cycle police, secret service, apparatchiks without overcoats, suddenly ferrying, escorting, the political elite through the crowds … waters part. One memorable scene from 1992: Nelson Mandela waiting patiently on the curb for his ride.

Warmth, after a painstaking slog through the crowds and a long wait at each traffic barrier, has never been so warm.

It is, of course, pure optimism or delusion that makes you think, with buoyant expectation, that the inaugural balls – my friend the officious jerk had arranged our passage to several – will be, well, ball-like: elegant men and women in a celebratory swirl. Or that there will be, at any rate, some sprightly red-carpet glamour.

More predictably, it is steamed-tray food of the most abysmal sort and people who have, perhaps very happily, never given a second thought to how they are dressed.

But there is excitement, too: an uncontainable sense of arrival and of personal advancement. There is high-fiving everywhere. It is febrile. It is market place excitement – trading up in progress in every conversation.

This is the political food chain, with a language shared by politicians, media, and bureaucrats on the make about who is higher up it. I have been to the Oscars and that event does not feel as self-congratulatory as this one. I have been to fashion week; no comparison as to who knows who and who is seated where.

Everybody at an inaugural is here because they are in the game – and are measuring their incremental progress in it. They have made it, as well as the president. This is their opportunity, too. This is their career. These are their spoils. Victory is not only sweet but it is deserved. And these are the stakeholders in the victory.

This is their thing, is what you realize – which is, I suppose, exactly what "inside the beltway" means.