Why DIDN'T Cheney Sing? Inauguration Day 2001
This is my Inauguration Day column from eight years ago. Ah the benefit of hindsight!"I hope you had fun watching the Inauguration yesterday. I know I did. I always watch Inaugurations, partly because I love seeing people in hats: Nancy Reagan in her signature reda; Jacquie way back, in her poofy pillbox. Hilary in ’93, in that deep-blue number that matched the coat. I was sorry Laura chose to go hatless, but I understand. We’d be lying if we didn’t admit that Hillary looked a lot like Smurfette in that deep-blue hat-and-coat ensemble, and a little like QE 2 as well, not meaning the luxury liner, of course, but the Queen herself, whose curse it is to live in a country where the female regent is just EXPECTED to wear a matching hat for every coat, and a matching purse to boot."Anyway, I loveall Inaugurations, mostly for the surprises they furnish us. I think of that blizzard that blew in January 19 of 1960, wrought havoc and blew back out again, blinding poor Robert Frost, who couldn’t see to read his poem, and ended up reciting a diffferent one, from memory. I think of the sight, eight years ago, of Emotional Bill, leaking tears like some Miss Congeniality all during the prayer service he attended the morning he took office."Of course there were small surprises this time too, the way Laura looked in her hatlessness being just one example. There was also:" The way Hillary looked, in what seemed to be a black Johnny Cash-style leather coat, with hair slicked back like Johnny Cash’s too. (Wait! Is Hillary actually turning into Johnny Cash? Is she becoming… TRANSGENDERED, as a final poke in the eye to Cheating Bill?"The way the new president gamely if quietly sang the words to the National Anthem, when that giant soldier-boy belted it out in his plummy voice."The way his Vice President Dick Cheney DIDN’T sing along but looked somberly straight ahead."All this time after catching such glimpses, I still look back at them, parsing them for the insights they might provide into the nature of the regime, and its new boss especially."Because we wonder: will this man be open, affable and good-natured, or will he tend more toward caution and calculation? Will he hold grudges and fence himself about with them, a man in a stockade, or can he let go of grievance, seeing people as he sees himself, filled to the brim with every sort of impulse, from high to low?"Someone said his success will depend on whether or not he enjoys wielding all the power inherent in the office. After all, power on that scale and the nation looking to YOU day and night have been known to turn men from spring-in-their-step bright-eyed warriors to haggard and scooped-out shells (see Jimmy Carter, Franklin Roosevelt, Dave Letterman.)"I HOPE Bush enjoys it. God knows he’s better at communicating joy than poor Al Gore, his opponent in this recent sorry election, and I admit here hat I voted for Gore."I wish the guy the best, as he and his wife Laura take up residence in that satin-pillowed jail, as former Bush and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan once described the White House, and she ought to know since she worked there for three years."I wish him luck, and I liked my Inauguration Day surprises, but still, I have to wonder: Why DIDN’T Cheney sing along?
