Record editor Brian Kelly is in Washington, D.C. with others from the Evergreen State for the inauguration of Barack Obama. He will file regular reports through Inauguration Day.
WASHINGTON, D.C. With just four days left before America’s 44th president takes office, Barack Obama is everywhere.
At Union Station, outside the Making History store, people posed next to two life-size cardboard cutouts of the next president. One Obama cutout was fitted with a T-shirt that read “I (heart) Michelle Obama.” No one stopped to pose next to a cardboard cutout of Vice President-elect Joe Biden, however.
Inside the store, customers poured over stacks of souvenirs, from Obama shirts, hats, key chains, coloring books, posters, postcards and small bottles of Obama hot sauce (labeled with the motto, “Heat we can believe in”).
Hillary Clinton souvenirs could be found on two shelves at the back of the store, with a sign proclaiming “50 percent off.”
Though maneuvering through the store was difficult because of the crowd, a clerk said they were expecting the big crush in the coming days.
Curbside salesmen greeted commuters and tourists as soon as they stepped outside Union Station; some offering Obama T-shirts, others buttons. Another vendor waved small booklets filled with Obama speeches at passersby. A T-shirt cost $12; a button with a smiling Obama next to Spiderman, $3.
Throughout the capital, preparations were well underway for Tuesday’s inauguration, which is expected to draw a crowd of more than a million.
Signs directing ticket holders were being raised along Constitution Avenue, based on the color-coded areas where viewers would watch; yellow, orange, purple, blue, silver. Delivery trucks were double-parked outside venues hosting inaugural balls as men unloaded tall stacks of bottled beverages; concrete barriers were placed temporarily on sidewalks until they would be moved into the street as barricades; the sound of police sirens could be heard everywhere. A crowd gathered on a sidewalk outside the Russell Senate Office Building when a police-escorted limousine came to a halt, and two SUVs filled with police stopped and officers piled out, each dressed in camouflage fatigues and holding M-16 rifles at the ready.
“Is it Obama?” someone asked.
“Isn’t he on a train somewhere?” another in the crowd replied.
One woman in the crowd finally stepped forward and asked a member of the security detail who they were waiting for and got a blunt response. “You don’t need to know!” he barked. The limo quickly pulled away and the crowd dispersed without an answer.
Massive banners adorned the fronts of buildings throughout the capital.
“Change we believe in” read the black banner on the Teamsters building. On the Canadian embassy, banners written in English and French read “Canada salutes President Obama.”
In the early afternoon, a crew checked the sound system for the swearing-in ceremony. A technician read a long passage from the Dr. Seuss book “Horton Hears a Who!” in front of thousands of empty metal folding chairs.
Much of the area for the swearing-in ceremony was closed off by Capitol Police; people gathered at the fence along the perimeter and asked strangers to take their picture with the flag- and bunting-draped Capitol in the background.
A television crew from a Japanese TV station stopped people to ask them to stand next to a “Change” meter, where they were asked, through an interpreter, to turn a dial-and-arrow device to one side that said “Yes” or the other side that said “No” if they thought Obama would bring change. Some were also asked to describe Obama using one word.
A crowd gathered around to watch, and some laughed when a man who answered “no” described Obama as “charismatic,” but didn’t know how to spell the word when asked by the television reporter.
