Vic Socotra

18 January 2009

Thinkin' About Tomorrow

(Old Hickory, 1829 Inauguration)

This is a solid morning, solid in the way that the sky has a certain density of cloud the color of steel, and the chill has brought all the molecules together in the most compact package. The antithesis of the expanding effervescence of the springtime: there is a palpable texture to this atmosphere that could be sliced with an ice saw.

I ventured out into it yesterday. The temperature was the lowest since 1995, coldest day in thirteen years. The parking lot at the historic strip mall at Buckingham was full but there were no people outside. The Hisspanic market across the street had a forlorn string of men huddled close to the long windowless brick wall.

What they could be waiting for on a frigid Saturday eluded me, and my heart went out to them in their shivering foot-stomping misery.

I had to go to the office and do in the silence what I should have done on frantic Friday, which was to take a leisurely stroll through the proposal de jour, and along the way, accomplish the Saturday list of errands, some long deferred.

A visit to Ben, my Tunisian barber, was high on the list. We banter in pidgin French and Spanish, and once a quarter, he leaves me with the visage of the later Paul Hindenburg: he trims the silver mane so that the hair stands erect and close-cropped, and the bushy walrus mustache is cut back to a fierce Prussian underline to my twice-broken nose.

I don't have time to get a haircut that often, so I appreciate the opportunity to get things back to some sort of order, even if it leaps the golden mean between shaggy and high-unt-tight. Entropy will bring the locks back down over my ears, in time, but it is best to trim the hedge short when I have the chance.

It is going to be a strange week. The faux holiday devoted to Dr. King’s memory will occur tomorrow. The government is off, bless them, though my miserly company does not observe the day. The significance of the day has risen in my estimation with the passing of time.

Perhaps it was the visit to the Ebenzer Baptist Church down in Atlanta a couple years ago, and several long minutes with Doctor King’s stark sepulcher on the concrete island in the long reflecting pool next door. We had our differences back in the day, about the nature of change and means to achieve it, but with the passing of the decades I have come to regard his struggle with awe.

He knew what was going to happen, and he rose each day with a strength and serenity of purpose in the face of it. He had a dream, and he was prepared to die for it.

The fact that the inauguration will follow the day after is surreal, like Mr. Lincoln’s ghost come back to town. It has been designated a National Special Security Event, which throws the still-considerable resources of the Federal Government behind against the task. We have all been girding ourselves for the implications of the security lock-down.

The bridges across the Potomac will be closed to personal vehicles, and as far as crossing the National Mall, forget about it.

The private sector has to work, of course, though the Government will continue on vacation. I don’t have a feel for it yet in the dense cold air, but they say that a million or two people have already begun to flood into the city. The spirit of Honest Abe has been invoked to describe this new man from Illinois. The lanky physique and color of his skin makes it a compelling image, but I think there is a more appropriate comparison.

I imagine it will be like it was Old Hickory came to town in March of 1829. It was the victory of the disenfranchised rabble who did not know what they were voting for, but clearly knew what they were voting against.

The battle between Andrew Jackson and John Quincy Adams was one of the foulest presidential campaigns in the short history of the Republic. At the beginning there was as little difference between the candidates as there was between Senators Obama and Clinton. Maintenance of protective tariffs and encouraging national infrastructure were hardly the stuff of base emotion, and thus the race devolved to a contest of personality, the Hero of New Orleans versus the pillar of the aristocratic North East.

Adams's supporters hurled charges of bigamy and adultery against Jackson and his wife Rachael, who had been previously married. She was an extremely private person, and was horrified by the allegations. Some say that the slander hastened her death, which occurred just before Christmas of 1828.

Jackson came to the White House in mourning. As the candidate of the Frontier, his victory was widely seen as a triumph for the common man and for the young democracy. The celebration of his inauguration was an opportunity for America’s ordinary citizen to rejoice.

Margaret Smith was a Cave-Dweller, a member of the permanent Washington social scene who did not decamp with the Congress each year. She left an eyewitness account of the pandemonium:

“…Thousands and thousands of people, without distinction of rank, collected in an immense mass round the Capitol, silent, orderly and tranquil, with their eyes fixed on the front of that edifice, waiting the appearance of the President in the portico.”

There was vast dignity at the swearing in, with celebratory cannon fire, and Old Hickory, who had walked to the capitol, rode off through the crowd that parted like the Red Sea before him.

“…then such a cortege as followed him! Country men, farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women and children, black and white. Carriages, wagons and carts all pursuing him to the President's house….”

The crowd there was impenetrable. The new President, after having been literally nearly pressed to death and almost suffocated by the mob in their eagerness to shake hands with him, retreated through the back door and escaped to his lodgings at Gadsby's Tavern.

“Ladies fainted, men were seen with bloody noses and such a scene of confusion took place as is impossible to describe, - those who got in could not get out by the door again, but had to scramble out of windows... it was the People's day, and the People's President and the People would rule."

There will be order this time. There are thousands of Federal Troops at the ready, and law enforcement from all over the country to ensure it.

I am still going to stay safely on this side of the Potomac. I remember the Clinton installation (sixteen years ago!) and the hoard of people streaming across the Memorial Bridge, singing the appropriated Fleetwood Mac anthem "Don't Stop Thinkin' About Tomorrow."

Well, I won't. But I will try to put it aside for a little while, and give a thought to the memory of Old Hickory and Dr. King in the meantime.

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