Where were you?

So, yesterday was inauguration day and boy didn’t we know it. All the hype. The media was in a total frenzy days before the event. The Times had a “countdown to the inauguration” link on its front page, the BBC promised “live coverage” throughout the day, Anja held an inauguration party and Becky and Erwan popped open a bottle of champagne. I missed the speech and Obama’s fluffing of the oath since I was putting kids to bed so I picked up on the BBC’s live coverage as Obama was in the middle of his inauguration lunch. Outside the massed media looked frozen as they stood in the cold January air. Who was it that chose 20th January as the official inauguration date? June or July would have been much better. Something to do with the Revolution no doubt.

The BBC journalists were pukka and doing their best to look enthusiastic and cheery as they shivered outside on the mall; their smiles about as frozen as their noses. “He’s been delayed,” they said graciously as they awaited for the Obama/Biden cavalcade to come down Pennsylvania Avenue – but one could see them wishing the Obama’s would “hurry-up for f…’s sake. It’s freezing out here….” Hugh Edward’s eyes were squinted up as he tried to stay warm under one miserable looking blanket and one could feel his discomfort at having to give an enthusiastic running commentary on the BBC’s roof top in temperatures close to freezing.

“In years to come people will be asking – where were you when the first black-African American President was sworn in?” Hugh gushed as his hair was whipped up by the lovely fresh breeze. Sitting on the sofa watching in the warmth of a cosy sitting room waiting for G. to come home from Munich is the answer. Much as I am a sucker for historic houses; films; books and events – I’m not that much of a sucker to want to spend a day in the freezing cold to catch a “glimpse” of the Obama’s as millions of Americans were doing.

Funnily enough my mind was cast back to what many would regard as being a non-event - where was I when President Bush was declared the official winner of the 2000 campaign. I was standing in the kitchen of the Begijnhof listening to the World Service incredulous that enough people had actually voted for him. Somehow that event sticks in my mind more than Obama’s inauguration. At least Obama talks sense of course he should have won the election – but Bush? I couldn’t then – and I still can’t quite fathom how on earth the American electorate, the very same that voted in Obama, managed to vote in a twit such as George Bush – and this was even before 9/11 or his by now infamous remarks such as: “the problem with the French is that they have no word for entrepreneur.”

I remember feeling vaguely disturbed at the thought that America was going to be run by a guy who looked, well, dim. Its not that I hold politicians in particularly high regard nor is it that I expect them all to be hugely intellectual academics but they must at least look as though could write a moderately good thesis on Keynesian economics if they really had to. Well, phew, yesterday, we said good-bye to all that and welcomed in a new era. Huge sigh of relief all round. HOPE in desperate times. Just what the doctor ordered after eight years of sitting on the edge wondering what gimmick George W Bush was going to pull out of his hat.

Now, I have to say that under any other circumstances I would look at a guy who pulled in such a huge crown with scepticism and cynicism. I mean Hitler rallied adoring crowds like that in Nuremberg right? Or the Ceauşescus who relied on “rent a crowds” to wave flags and look adoringly at them. Such big crowds are normally the preserve of nasty dictators – not democratically elected Presidents. Its very hard to be sneering or cynical about Barak Obama though no matter how hard one tries. He seems genuinely nice. A cool head on strong shoulders. A wise guy. A man who looks as though he’s really concerned about the good of all and not just the good of vested interests. In any case his wife looks lovely and the girls adorable – so perhaps it really is the dawning of a new, hopeful, era.

No doubt the crowd will go on loving the guy even after he retires from politics. I wonder how long the media’s love affair with him will last. The parallels with Tony Blair are striking – he too won the election in 1997 with a huge majority. Adoring crowds lined the streets leading up to 10 Downing Street. They cheered and waved as he stood outside the front door with his young photogenic family. He went on to win two more elections credibly. Even after he had committed British troops to Iraq he still went on to deliver Labour a credible majority in Parliament. The voters still liked and trusted Blair. Even now though the media deigns not to cover Blair’s achievements – only his mistakes. We’ll see how long this hero is reduced to zero by the media.

In post script I have to add, the one thing I love about the Obama campaign – more so than all his moving speeches and soaring rhetoric - and for that alone I would have probably voted for him, superficial girl that I am, is his iconic HOPE poster by Shepard Fairey. Its fantastic artwork combining Andy Warhol pop art with art deco design. Obama’s a good looking guy and his face lends itself to such graphic imagery perfectly. I’m seriously tempted to hang it up in the house – not because I’m such a slavish fan of Obama, you understand, but because I think the poster would look nifty hanging in the hall way somewhere.