Your Sunday Politics: Inaugural Costs and Condi
Well, Inauguration Week has come and gone. Even now, the last of our out-of-town guests are making their way out of our snowblanketed city, Ana Marie Cox is peacefully sleeping one off, and black bandanna-bedecked suburbanites are planning on returning to their regular jobs waiting tables at Denny’s. It was a week filled with pomp, protest, train derailments and the inexplicable vandalizing of Adams Morgan. Next time, maybe your friends at DCist will get credentialed.
But, as Washington digs out of the snow and puts the political pageantry behind us, DCist feels obligated to offer our services to our little buddies over at The Washington Times. Joseph Curl of the Times reported on Thursday that this year’s inaugural “cost less than President Clinton's second inauguration in 1997, which cost about $42 million,” adding, “When the cost is adjusted for inflation, Mr. Clinton's second-term celebration exceeds Mr. Bush's by about 25 percent.”
Joseph? Take out a pen and paper, and make some notes: As reported by Salon’s Eric Boehlert, who sourced this through the Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Newsday, and the St. Petersburg Times, Clinton’s second inaugural cost $29.7 million (which, adjusted for inflation, comes to about $35 million). We at DCist don’t doubt that’s still an obscene amount of cheddar to spend on a party, but we’re reserving judgment until someone actually invites us to a shindig with that sort of budget. In the meantime, Joe, you aren’t allowed to just make stuff up.
Inauguration wasn’t the only big political story this week. The confirmation hearing of Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice was its own piece of political theatre. First off, we noticed the same thing our friends at 1115.org noticed, the puzzling frequency with which Democratic senators seemed to highlight their inability to forestall Rice’s nomination. Again and again, they reminded onlookers that Rice was basically in the clear to start measuring window treatments for her office at State. We suppose that the looming Inaugural was responsible for plunging the Senate Democrats into the Big Sad, and it was that swampy morass of regret from whence emanated these bleating arias of self-pity.
Some drama was injected into the hearings when California Senator Barbara Boxer (D), who apparently was under the impression that she was participating in some sort of hearing, subjected Rice to some rigorous questioning, which provoked the nominee to accuse the senator of "impugning [her] credibility [and her] integrity." For her part, Rice offered a new phrase to our lexicon: "Outposts of Tyranny.” Referring to Cuba, Myanmar, Belarus and Zimbabwe, these outposts are going to look lovely on the shelf next to the "Axis of Evil," as well as the forthcoming "Encampments of Disgreeableness" and "Checkpoints of Gauche."
(Image of James Garfield Inaugural invitation from Williams College; Image of Condoleezza Rice with Yo-Yo Ma from beautyinmusic.com, which has Rice selected as part of its "ultimate guide to the hottest women in classical music.")