Random Thoughts on the Great Day

There is no escaping the Great Inauguration, still less the blizzard of verbiage enveloping it. All seem agreed that it is, in many and various ways, a Good and a Great Thing - and who would disagreee? Apart, that is, from the supreme ruler of Iran, the Ayatollah Khameini, who snappily describes Obama as 'the hand of Satan in a new sleeve'. Never afraid of breaking with the consensus, those ayatollahs. Meanwhile, the rest of the world inclines towards the messianic in its assessment of the incoming Pres. The weight of expectation on his shoulders is obviously far too much for any mortal politician, but I hope there's a nugget of something in that optimistic view, and that at least Obama won't go from hero to zero as comprehensively and catastrophically as Blair did in the years following the rapture of May 97.
At another supposedly epoch-making inauguration - that of JFK - the aged poet Robert Frost, long declined into windbaggery, was wheeled out to declaim a new composition. It didn't go very well. Poets have no place on these occasions anyway (Clinton had Maya Angelou - has Obama got anyone lined up? I hope not. If he's on form, his prose will be enough, and more.) To see how an inauguration was done in the early days, catch next Saturday's episode of John Adams. In fact, catch it anyway - this HBO production is the best hitorical drama in years, and makes our homegrown efforts look infantile. Channel 4 is throwing it away in an afternoon slot - typical.
Meanwhile, let's enjoy today as best we can...