Where politics is involved, I have strict standards of exposure to which I rigidly adhere.

DIRECT MAIL DURING PRIMARIES:  Democratic candidate submittals are trashed without review.  Republican offerings are scrutinized with great care.

TELEVISION ADS AT ANY TIME IN THE PROCESS:  Like most American males, the television’s remote control is my scepter.  It is always close at hand lest any political commercial threaten to disturb my Wa.  I can manually locate the “previous” button without recourse to illumination or sobriety.  I will usually watch each manifestation one time only for the purpose of validating my refusal to witness a second.

DEBATES:  I will watch these only if rendered immobile by physical or psychotropic means.  I already know who I will vote for; why should I waste an hour of my life on foregone conclusions when it could be spent more profitably watching Entertainment Tonight or playing mumbly-peg with my wife?

CONVENTIONS:  In solidarity with the major news organizations, I ignore them almost completely.  I will sometimes watch the first night of the Republican confab on C-SPAN for the sole purpose of witnessing some GOP stemwinder slander the Democratic Party.  But I have my standards:  If the act is carried out with wit and panache, I will persevere.  However, if the speaker resorts to axes and bludgeons, I regard it as too much firepower for so insignificant a subject.  In such cases. Emerill is always cooking something somewhere.

ELECTION NIGHT COVERAGE:  Unless I have placed a wager on some particular outcome, I will watch a broadcast of “Beach Blanket Bingo” (Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon) instead.  Rather than subjecting my retinas to network maps and my tympanic membranes to expert analysis, I prefer to watch the next day’s roundup.  I have the same opinion of athletic events.  Why should I devote three hours of time watching a football game (the outcome of which I cannot affect and the drama of which I cannot appreciate), when I can more easily watch the final five minutes of ABC’s early morning broadcast and observe 100% of the previous day’s athletic artistry?

INAUGURATIONS:  C-SPAN is my political network of choice because it is poor.  Both C-SPAN networks are funded by the cable TV industry and anyone who has perused his or her cable bill will agree that charity is not a virtue highly regarded by that enterprise.  Therefore, C-SPAN is not encumbered with expensive commentators and vacuous talking-heads.  A few camera operators train their lenses on the dais and the crowd, and viewers are left to figure it all out for themselves.

But I don’t follow inauguration festivities in real-time anyway.  On Tuesday afternoon it competed with a Stevan Seagal epic on Encore which I had not seen a sufficient number of times to accurately recite every word of dialogue.  This was an easy choice.  Nevertheless, for a variety of stupid reasons I was ambulatory at 2:00 AM Wednesday and observed the ceremonies on my favorite channel sans celebrity chit-chat and bigfoot commentary.

Those who lack the proper historical and political context may be excused for seeing an inauguration as nothing more than a tedious parade, a boring melange of speeches and a passel of fiestas where partisan swells whoop it up with dignity – a contradiction in terms.  Even a party of hip, celebrity-infested Democrats celebrating the inauguration of the nation’s first black Chief Executive is nothing more than a bunch of middle-aged white folks dancing like … well … middle-aged white folks.

On January 20, 2009 Barak Hussein Obama became the 44th president of the United States.  He is the first African-American president in our nation’s history.  The president is black because, according to the race laws in force in America at the time of his birth (and silently observed to this day), he would be so designated even if no one other than his great-grandmother were black.  In America, the qualifications for “whiteness” are strict while the rules for “blackness” have always been overly-generous.  He swore the oath of office with his left hand resting on the Bible previously used for the same purpose by his fellow-Illinoisan Abraham Lincoln.  On the previous day the nation celebrated the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  A symbolic line was drawn from the murdered president who ended slavery in America, to the murdered civil rights crusader who demanded that America live up to her creed, to our first black president.  I now have to say the following lest some pinhead draw the wrong conclusion:  Pray God that our president does not share the same fate.

The inauguration of an American president is a potent ritual and it is vital to the preservation of the American system.  The ritual is important because humans always surround their most cherished activities with pomp and circumstance.  Baptism, briss, confirmation, bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, flags, war memorials, labor, law and mothers are granted special significance by the rituals we observe to honor them.  There are those who see in ritual nothing more than empty gestures that individuals who have little appreciation of their importance perform by rote.  That may be true, but the fact that those individuals know that they should cover their heart during the national anthem and uncover their heads during prayer is persuasive evidence that even the uninformed appreciate the power of ritual.

Inaugurating a president is not the same as installing the Program Chairman at the local Elks Club.  It is an event filled with significance, canopied with solemn protocol and vastly different from any similar event in the world.  Over a span of 220 years 43 men have participated in the peaceful transfer of executive power in the United States.  One man, holding the primary authority of government in our nation, willingly – even graciously – hands that awesome power to another man.  Some have had that power thrust upon them by their predecessor’s death, but no man has ever achieved it by force.

The United States is a relative newcomer in the community of nations, but it has the oldest government on earth.  During our time the rest of the world has marveled at the ease with which we take power from one group and willingly hand it to another for no other reason except that this is how we have always done it and we will tolerate no alternative.  It is nothing short of a miracle and we do it every four or eight years without breaking a sweat.

Not that this miracle is cheap; American’s will cough-up about $124 M for the p & c of president Obama’s inauguration.  That amount of money would feed an unknown number of people for an unspecified period of time.  It could be used to increase teacher salaries somewhere, clean up a toxic waste site or two, hire more police in several communities, or any number of Worthy Causes.  Instead, we spent it on parade security, grandstands, high school bands and an armored Cadillac for the Obama’s ride.

What a bargain!  The ritual of inauguration and the price we pay for it testifies to the fact that this event is important and we and the rest of the world should pay attention to it.  Yet again, the United States of America has transformed itself peacefully.  What we bought for $124 M is the installation of a new president with the suitable trappings and finery appropriate for him to assume that office properly and take his place as the leader of the world’s most powerful and awesome nation.  For less than it would cost to swap-out the front end of an aircraft carrier, we have assured ourselves and our friends that American policy can reverse itself overnight but the FACT of America does not change and our fundamental appreciation of peace, stability and liberty remains intact.

Our enemies see it all differently.  They lack the basic philosophical equipment to see America, as Lincoln put it, as “the last, best hope of mankind”.  Our foes in World War II regarded America as a weak, mongrelized, money-grubbing society.  Hitler believed we were fit only to make refrigerators and automobiles.  Well, the automobiles became over 300,000 combat aircraft and the refrigerators became rations, ordnance, uniforms, ships and thousands of other appliances of destruction.  The money-grubbers sacrificed some lucre for victory and the “mongrels” provided us all with an example to admire.  Black servicemen struggled and suffered humiliation for the “privilege” of risking their lives to defend the nation that treated them so shabbily.  German POW’s, traveling through the segregated south to prison camps, were allowed to eat in any restaurant along the way while their black, American guards were denied entry.  Last week I saw a sweatshirt which read, “Rosa sat so Martin could march, so Obama could run”.  Perhaps “Tuskegee flew” should be added at the beginning.

I disagree with president Obama on virtually all substantive issues of our day but I retain great hope for his success.  His path to the White House may have been strewn with the death, scandal and overconfidence of his chief opponents, but only Jimmy Carter could seize the prize based only on these.  President Obama may also possess a quality rare even among American presidents – leadership.  Leadership is the ability to direct masses of people with divergent interests in one direction.  Part of his perceived leadership is provided by the American people, who expressed in the late election their desire to be led somewhere – anywhere – but the direction we were headed.  The balance is provided by the president himself.  Like Ronald Reagan – the last president with the quality of leadership – Mr. Obama has a vision for America’s future.

The president also has charisma, but that is different from leadership.  John Kennedy oozed  charisma but couldn’t lead an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress to pass a Civil Rights bill (largely because it was overwhelmingly Democratic).  Lyndon Johnson had zero charisma but, as Senate Majority Leader and during his first term as president, he was the veritable template for leadership.  LBJ led the Congress and the American people to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act before his general election confrontation with Barry Goldwater, handed the previously “Solid South” to the Republicans, and still kicked Goldwater’s butt in November, 1964.  Political science students still study Johnson’s leadership qualities because he has no peer.  President Obama seems to have this quality but it is a bit early to tell.

A few observers, mostly on conservative talk radio, mumbled some discontent about the elephant (or donkey) in the living room – race.  Wasn’t there just a bit too much emphasis placed on race when we are striving, in our slow, inept, but heartfelt way, to put race behind us?

Well … I could say that most Americans are proud of our nation’s diversity – until it moves in next door.  It’s fine and dandy when educated foreigners wait in line to seek opportunity in America but it’s not so fine and dandy when impoverished people who will never live long enough to reach the head of that line, scale a physical wall to achieve the same blessing.  We rail against immigrants who take domestic jobs from native-born Americans almost as loudly as we denounce them for taking the same jobs while remaining at home.  I’ve lived in the American West where the black population is small to non-existent, but it’s OK – there are plenty of American Indians to take up the slack.  Asian-Americans raise the entrepreneurship and scholarship bars so high that “regular Americans” can’t compete.  Yes indeedy, diversity is a fine thing and a vital component of American culture so long as it doesn’t get uppity.

Despite the individual prejudices of tens of millions of Americans directed toward various segments of our diverse population, the American political and cultural system has managed to elect as president a representative of the only immigrant group to arrive on our shores unwillingly.  Once again, the miracle that is America expresses itself almost despite ourselves.  America absorbs all who come into contact with her and makes a place for them.  On this occasion, the place is at the head of the table.

During the campaign, Michelle Obama was unjustly criticized for saying that “for the first time”, she was proud to be an American.  She should have waited until after the votes were counted and  the source of her pride had been made manifest.  The last time I saw black Americans stand in solidarity with their nation was on September 11, 2001.  Last week I saw it over and over again and nobody had to die.  I have often said that America is better, wiser and stronger than any of the men we have elected to lead us.  I can now sincerely state that America is also better, wiser and stronger than any one of us.