Inauguration

About two years ago, I wrote optimistically about today:

[Dad] outlasted Donald Rumsfeld, Bill Frist and Tom Delay, and he’s optimistic that Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as Attorney General will self-immolate before the [pancreatic] cancer returns, as it most certainly will. It’s a long wait to January 2009, but one way or another I’m planning to spend the next inauguration day with my father and his youngest granddaughter, watching C-SPAN and heckling the worst president since James Buchanan as he leaves office in a hail of eggs.

Almost none of this came to pass. My father died in October 2007; I wasn’t tuned in to C-SPAN this morning; and notwithstanding the usual bromides about the “peaceful transfer of power,” the volleys of produce were rather more figurative than I’d hoped.

Still, I was able to watch the entire thing with my daughter, who was surprisingly enthusiastic about the live CNN feed on my laptop. It’s true that some of the context escaped her understanding; she seemed to think CNN was conducting an elaborate game of peek-a-boo featuring Barack Obama, and she confused Itzhak Perlman with John McCain for some reason. Moreover, I had to keep reassuring her during Obama’s speech that he wasn’t actually “yelling at us” and that he wasn’t yelling at us because he was “crabby.”

On the other hand, she offered the unsolicited observation that George Bush is a “bonehead,” and she asked if Barack Obama was “taking a little nap” during Rick Warren’s benediction, most of which we missed because we were having a conversation about his goatee. Her remarks about Dick Cheney’s “bicycle” were considerably less mean-spirited than mine. All of which probably means she’s ready to begin guest-blogging for me the next time I leave town.

All things considered, it was a pretty good way to spend a morning. I’m usually not vulnerable to much political sentimentalism, but it was actually quite moving to be able to watch the ceremony with a near-three-year-old who — to my great envy — will never be afflicted with living memories of the Bush years. I suppose when I was roughly her age, I may have watched Nixon’s second inauguration with my father, though in all likelihood not. But I remember the end of the Nixon presidency, if somewhat dimly. If everything goes well, my daughter’s first political memories will vastly surpass mine. And her brother — who should arrive in about five weeks — will have the good fortune to be born during an Obama administration, a fact that I hope one day will provide him with as much satisfaction as it will his dad.