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Inauguration Celebrations Begin in Washington
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WASHINGTON — On Sunday, President-elect Barack Obama got Elizabeth Ross, a 57-year-old African-American woman from Lorman, Miss., to see Bruce Springsteen in concert. Clad in a floor-length black mink coat, matching hat and stunningly manicured nails, Mrs. Ross — and hundreds of thousands of others, their faces bright with both chill and expectation — converged on the Lincoln Memorial to kick off America’s three-day inauguration party.
Crammed together as far as the eye could see — from the seated statue of Abraham Lincoln all the way past the reflecting pool and up the hill to the Washington Monument — they danced, sang, shivered, cheered, hooted and hollered for the black man who will be America’s next president, in what seemed a cross between the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington and Woodstock.
Mr. Obama, looking into the mass of faces raised to him, seemed to feed off the crowd. The text of his speech was somber, noting the economic crisis and the two wars, and calling for a new spirit of sacrifice to overcome them. But his voice was upbeat.
“I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure,” the president-elect said. “What gives me that hope is what I see when I look out across this mall.”
Looking back at him from across the Mall was an ocean of expectations, as people from Napa, Calif., to Detroit to Orlando, Fla., clad in Obama T-shirts, hats, jewelry and even face paint, hugged one another and swayed to the music from the array of heavy hitters from the entertainment world who were performing. “My father would have loved to have seen this,” Mrs. Ross said, gazing raptly at the stage.
In front of her, Mr. Springsteen was singing “The Rising,” the song he wrote after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that pays homage to the firefighters who lost their lives as they climbed the stairs of the burning Twin Towers.
Mrs. Ross had never seen Mr. Springsteen in concert. In fact, the last concert she went to was by the Manhattans in Atlanta in 2001.
And yet, there she was, along with three girlfriends — all in floor-length minks — huddled in the cold, tapping their feet to the beat. Four middle-age, African-American women, talking about the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965, about Dr. King, about the civil rights movement — and listening to Bruce.
“I’m so out of my comfort zone out here in the cold,” said Delphine Straughn-Tupper, one of Mrs. Ross’s friends. “But there was no way I was going to miss this.”
For Mr. Obama and his aides, finding a way to temper and manage all that emotion and optimism may be their biggest challenge in the next three days. The incoming White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, was on “Fox News Sunday” trying to remind everyone that the country will still be in a recession on Jan. 21.
“We did not get into the situation overnight,” Mr. Gibbs said. “The problems and the challenges that our country face didn’t happen all last week. It’s going to take us some time.”
Aides said that Mr. Obama’s inauguration speech would touch on individual responsibility, and would urge Americans to prepare for hard times ahead. Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, told NBC that the speech would declare an end to “the culture of anything goes” and demand a new era of responsibility from government, corporations and Americans in general.
Once he takes office, Mr. Obama will call in his top military commanders and ask them to figure out a withdrawal plan for Iraq, and will pledge more American troops to Afghanistan, his aides said. In Iraq, “we’re in an area where everyone agrees that we should be on a path to withdrawing those troops,” his senior adviser, David Axelrod, told “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on ABC.
Mr. Obama may also issue executive orders in his first week that call for the closing of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, though the process may take time, Mr. Gibbs said.
But on the Mall on Sunday, few people were talking about Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo or responsibility. Instead, they were talking about history.
“We’ve been up since 6 a.m.,” said Sarah Scheffer, 18, of Rumson, N.J., who showed up before the gates opened with a dozen other freshmen from American University to secure a spot close to the stage. “It’s going to be a long day, but it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
People perched in the trees around the Lincoln Memorial and even sat on top of the portable toilets to get glimpses of the stage. Fire trucks parked on closed-off 17th Street in front of the World War II monument, but firefighters were not engaged in fire control. Instead, they stood on top of their trucks as people crowded around them, handing up digital cameras and begging them to take photographs of them in front of the crowds. The firefighters obliged, although one could be heard, grumbling, “O.K., we’ve got to wrap this up now.”
The temperature was 28 degrees, but wave after wave of people kept coming, cramming closer to Lincoln’s seated statue.
For his part, Mr. Obama, who started his day by laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns in Arlington National Cemetery and trying out a potential new church for his family, the Nineteenth Street Baptist Church in northwest Washington, appeared to enjoy the concert. When Mr. Springsteen and the folk singer Pete Seeger led a raucous foot-stomping version of “This Land Is Your Land,” Mr. Obama sang along with everyone else.
From the stage, Denzel Washington and Jamie Foxx appeared, almost in a competition for the role of Mr. Obama when Hollywood tries its first take on the 44th president.
Mr. Washington went first, striding confidently on stage — to the attendant shrieks from women in the audience — and delivering a speech that sounded like one of Mr. Obama’s, complete with references to the legacies of Lincoln and other forefathers.
But then came Mr. Foxx, who did Mr. Washington one better. “Change has come,” Mr. Foxx intoned, in a drop-dead impersonation of Mr. Obama’s speech election night in Grant Park in Chicago. In front of him, a delighted-looking Mr. Obama was grinning.
