THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 25, 1997 TAG: 9701250300
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: 57 lines
No wonder Bill Clinton gave what some deem a no-more-than-normal inaugural speech.
While he was writing it, word got around he had sent for speeches of all the second-term presidents.
All of 'em, save Lincoln's, put one to sleep.
Aides shouldn't have disclosed that Clinton was slaving over a speech, anyway. ``He's too busy helping Chelsea with her homework,'' they should've said. They also blabbed that a team helped. Writing a speech, one better trust one's spouse, no one else.
And there was no crisis such as moved Tom Paine to cry, ``These are the times that try men's souls!''
These are the times that try men's patience.
Clinton was over-trained. Up late, anyway, he arose early Inauguration Day to parse that speech.
And then endured a long-drawn worship service with enough praying to last an eon. Hillary was pert as a robin on a twig. Clinton went in and out of a glassy-eyed trance.
Slack-jawed as a sleepy child, he rubbed his closed eyes with thumb and forefinger during prayers, begging Mercy. Next he fell under the sway of U.S. Sen. John Warner, master of ceremonies at America's elbow all day, our cicerone imparting inaugural lore.
Rehearsing, Warner had stressed that Clinton be sworn in on the nose at noon lest the nation be left rudderless in a ``hiatus'' at the mercy of a strike by Dr. No or Goldfinger.
Many viewers grasped for the first time the Constitution's insistence on continuity of government.
Wearing silver glasses, dark formal coat, white silk scarf and black homburg, subbing for Clinton in a walk-through days earlier, Warner strode, face set, to the rostrum as if to strains of ``Hail to the Chief.''
At the inauguration, Warner commended the president for giving Bob Dole the Presidential Medal of Freedom and added his bit to tradition by calling for the Pledge of Allegiance.
After the swearing in, presiding at a lunch amid Capitol statuary, Warner noted that President McKinley hosted the first one. He also confided that Chelsea had suggested he tell everybody to ``just kick back and have a good time.''
That young lady's advice was a delight.
Warner recalled how Franklin Roosevelt snubbed U.S. Sen. Harry F. Byrd Sr.'s offer of $100,000 for inaugural expenses in 1945 and asked for only $25,000. Later, tough old Byrd ignored FDR's request for more. That, Warner said, explained why Roosevelt had a modest inauguration in the White House.
Which, by that time, Bill Clinton had cause to covet.
How that day's spectacle must have roiled Republicans who had tried to deny Warner his Senate seat. Well, many would agree he had earned his day in the sun.
The tardy worship service set back Clinton's oath five seconds.
The Republic survived.