Republican Rasta Man

”When the Declaration of Independence was first read in public and the Liberty Bell was sounded in celebration, a witness said, “It rang as if it meant something.”

President Bush spoke those words after the Chief Justice swore him in for the second time. The Chief Justice made quite an effort to be there, and there was still a surgical tube in his throat. It is 34 years on the court for him, and I suspect this year will be his last.

There were not quite as many people in the crowd below as there could have been, though you could not see that on the television.

There was an issue with the security check points. Only a couple places were designated to enter the sealed area around the Capitol Grounds and the parade route, and people were jammed thick in lines, well-heeled Republicans and scruffy kids all smashed in together.

The screeners were trained by the Transportation Security Agency, so you have a feel for how the process worked. They took batches of thirty people at a time.

”May God bless you,” the President told the incomplete crowd. ”And may He watch over the United States of America.”

Then, according to the plan, the President went to lunch. That was about the time I emerged from the Metro Center stop on the subway. I was headed for a fund-raiser for a prominent Democrat that the company was hosting on the inaugural parade route. It was a chance to be nice to the losers, and a chance for us to see the whoop-la.

The stops closer to Pennsyvlania Avenue were closed. Archives was right near the Capital Grill, where the fund raiser for the was scheduled, but that would have been inside the metal wall. It was shut down hard.

I strode off down the street, nattily attired for the affair. I had reviewed some of the biographic information on the Senator we were hosting, and was thankful that it was the company and not me that was expected to cough up the donation. I avoid crowds when I can, and normally wouldn’t be caught dead at the Inauguration.

For the occasion, I wore an Alexander of London double-breasted suit, Brooks Brothers shirt in pinstripes with a white spread collar and power red tie in an Armani pattern. My Burberry trench coat flapped around me like khaki bat wings.

In deference to the remaining slush, I wore sensible brogan shoes rather than my more elegant pumps. I had some walking to do.

I slogged from 12 th and G street, headed for the 600 block of Pennsylvania ave. It was strange the moment I emerged. A bus was parked sideways across 12 th street, and some vehicle likewise blocked each intersection closer to the parade route.

Consequently, there was no traffic except for the odd Police Cruiser. I walked boldly down the middle of the street, zig-zagging ever closer to the restaurant. I glanced at my watch.

Just getting here had taken a half hour longer than I had expected, and I hoped that the people who arranged the soiree for the Senate Minority Leader would not be cross with me.

In researching my little array of small talk for the Senator from Searchlight, Nevada, I found he had converted to the Church of Latter Day Saints when he was in college, so it was unlikely that there would be wine on the buffet.

I ran into local news anchor Gordon Peterson, who was walking away from a thick knot of people at 7 th and E with his cameraman in tow. He is a tall man with a gentle ironic look who has been trusted by a generation of Washington television watchers. He had his trademark wry grin on his face. I knew he had captured his story and was headed back to the station for the evening reading.

He was done with this and I had not even started. I stuck out my hand, and since he couldn’t tell at that moment if I was somebody or not, he shook mine as I went by.

It looked like the crowd was lined up for a march. There were signs everywhere, saying the usual insulting things about the President, accusing him of stealing some other election, or war crimes. There were the usual fetal pictures on placards, and pro-choice ones.

There seemed to be Republicans in the crowd, too, which was odd, all of that political disparity all in the same place, but I had to get by to get to the Grill, so I edged up the block and cut across the back of the throng. I walked around a cordon of DC cops and got down another block and turned right. I could see the restaurant on the corner, with the imposing fence between me and the front door. I assumed they would be admitting sponsors through the rear entrance, and that is where I found two of our company’s Vice Presidents.

”We’re not getting in this way,” said the Chief of Washington Operations. ”The police say we need to go back to Seventh and E to get to the access point.” We passed  young men hawking disposable cameras to memorialize the event.

The light came on. ”Oh,” I said. ” That is why there is a strange and unsettled crowd there. They are not letting anyone in.”

We swam through the throng to get back to 7th Street. We negotiated the line of cops again, and pressed our way around a Jersey Barrier where a man was selling Chicken Hawk T-shirts for $15. The picture of the President on the front was one of the grotesque ones, not very flattering.

It was only at that point that we understood how the system had been intended to work, and why it was not working at all. We were on the flank of a vast bulk of people a block long and a block wide, bounded by the brick walls of the intersection. The wait at the security check point had gone on so long that the crowd had become a demonstration in itself.

Sleek gray haired men in camel coats were pressed against World Bank protestors, Armani scarves against pierced lips.

The mood was testy but jovial. Someone joked that this was actually the end of the line to see Ronald Reagan’s casket. There was nervous laughter, and rising claustrophobia. A young man with long dreadlocks climbed up on one of the barriers, holding aloft a poster that depicted Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, apparently favorably. A tan knit hat gathered some of his locks above a face that was serene and unlined, not unlike the young Bob Marley. Republican Rasta Man, I thought.

Or Agent Provocateur? I’ve been places where that was done. It has been a long time since I was in a riot. In fact, the last one was right here in Washington.

Rasta Man began to harangue the Anti-Bush people in the crowd. Behind me a young mother tried to keep her two children with her in the clinging mass of people. I tried to block a hole for in the press.”I’ll be your tackle,” I said, straightening my tie, ”You be the pulling guard.”

The young man with the poster continued to yell, pointing in turn at his poster and the crowd. There was nothing else to do. We were stuck. We watched.

A chorus of ”Four more years!” from one segment of the crowd, all mixed, was answered with something else, something profane. Bob Marley continued to scream at the crowd. I yelled back: ”Who is that with Mr. Cheney!?!”

My Vice President said that if things didn’t start moving quickly we ought to just bag it and go back to the office. It was just then that the mood seemed to change. I saw white objects fly from the edge of my vision. They looked like missiles of bright white, harmless as chunks of Wonder Bread.

I realized they were snowballs fashioned from the remnants of yesterday’s snowstorm. And then I realized that this had brought us to some sort of break-point in the Security Master Plan.

I heard a siren, and I saw lights filtered through human bodies. A car was driving slowly into the crowd, lights flashing and siren running. The cops were responding to the snowballs.

I glanced over my shoulder at the compnay VP, pressed where he was by the crowd.

I remembered my last riot here. It was 1970, at the apex of a massive protest against some other war. It was the first time I had been in Washington on my own, an observer, more than a protestor, I thought, though the distinction seemed lost on the police. I was standing with some journalists on the Mall, watching the Army helicopters cross the river to land troops. The police turned toward us and I realized that I was going to have to move or be clubbed down.

In that moment I darted toward salvation, which turned out to be the Smithsonian Museum Gift Shop. I ran up the steps, and in a sparkling moment, transitioned from a protestor to a shopper. The tourists looked at stuff on the shelves, oblivious to the conflict outside. The Cops never came in the building, and I watched them clear the Mall from a vantage point near a stack of books celebrating a victory in the Civil War.

I looked at the Vice President, and the glance said: ”Move, luncheon be damned.” The Wonder Bread rain had provoked a mopment of truth in public order.

We clambered over a Jersey barrier, dragging my suit pants over the concrete, and I hoped it would not ruin them. We edged through the crowd, which was surging toward the action. The cordon of Police was trying to force people up on the sidewalk and there was no room. Their eyes were wide and I tried to say something soothing to the blue uniforms as we moved away from the center of mass.

“Get on the curb!”

“It’s OK, it’s OK, we’re moving.”

Halfway up the block the Vice President’s cell phone went off. It was a call from the event organizer. He hadn’t managed to get in either, and wondered what was going on. He was concerned that there might be no one to talk to the Senator. We continued to walk away from the security checkpoint. ”You aren’t going to get there, and neither are we” said the Vice President. ”We are going to lunch.”

We rounded the corner and saw the reserve Cops opening the trunks to their cars, bringing out the body armor and shields and batons. There was a whiff of what could have been tear gas in the air, and I thought about the mom and her little kids who had been pressed behind me in the crowd.

The batons had a little spring-like device at one end and a round bulb at the tip for impact. We were briefly pinned down at the square across from the National Portrait Gallery by a fierce policewoman who waved police vehicles headed down to pacify the protestors and the hapless Republicans pressed among them. The big white building had once been the Patent Office that Mr. Lincoln would have known.

We waited patiently. There as an intense young man with a headset attached to the phone in his hand. He seemed convinced that he needed to get to the checkpoint and get to an important function. He was upset, and so was the African American policewoman trying to clear the way for re-enforcements to the response group.

”Get back!” she yelled at him.

”But I have to get to Pennsylvania Avenue!” he responded. I wanted to tell him that arguing with excited police was not a good career move, but I let it go. Thirty years ago they would have hauled him away and locked him up in RFK Stadium with the other thousands, Republican or not. Five vehicles went by, and then he was free to head toward the riot, and we were free to go to lunch.

McCormick & Shmink is the nice seafood house across the square, and that is where we went. We got a table in front, and talked business as the cars went by, lights flashing, and the sirens keening. The manager was running an inaugural special on Sam Adams beer (”Brewer and Patriot”), and we enjoyed two with lunch.

I highly recommend the broiled seafood platter, which features salmon, shrimp and crab cakes.

Lights came and went outside. We talked about mergers and acquisitions, and rioting, and whether the luncheon for the losing party was an effective strategy or not. When we were done, we walked up the street to the Metro Center stations and escaped the District on the subway. There was a packed train just pulling into the lower level bound for Vienna as we came down the escalator.

This must be my lucky day, I thought, and pressed my way in. ”Doors Closing!” said the recorded voice of the train.

There are ten inaugural events tonight, six of them at the Convention Center above the Mt. Vernon Station, which is closed for the occasion.

Trust me, I am staying home.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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