Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220413
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: PAXTON DAVIS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
INAUGURAL GLITZ
A NATION whose patriotic ideal is John Wayne is not likely to value modesty highly. So it was that the ceremonies and festivities attending the presidential inauguration of Bill Clinton were pitched mostly to the show-business notions of power and ritual that dominate the United States in the age of television.From the beginning, when the Clintons and Gores wrapped themselves in the mantle of Thomas Jefferson, by visiting Monticello and thereafter retracing, more or less, Jefferson's journey to Washington on the same occasion in 1801, the inauguration became a show in which the needs and considerations of television and its ceaseless preoccupation with mass "entertainment" overwhelmed everything else.
Endless shots of measureless crowds along the highways, at the Lincoln Memorial and along Washington's Mall lent ample illustration to the idea that this would be a "people's" inauguration. And though I automatically check my wallet when anyone claims to speak for "the people," it was obvious that to Bill Clinton and his entourage massive symbols of universalism, inclusion and what is nowadays called "multiculturalism" should be shown and repeated to underscore his claim to head a government that will be "open" and "accessible," two other buzzwords of the kind most presidents enter office speaking, perhaps even believing.
It was on this note, then, that Clinton assumed office, a note curiously mingling the strains of a genuinely high idealism and the crudest vulgarities of the world of entertainment - which repaid his solicitude with partisan gloating grossly inappropriate to an occasion so momentous and so solemn.
Enormous decisions await Clinton; and I could have done with less show-biz light and heat, and a deeper expression of personal and national modesty at the prospect of facing them. Clinton has worked most of his life to win the White House, and appears to entertain few doubts of his ability to deal with its manifold problems.
But the nation also needs reminding that it cannot do or have everything it wants now or maybe ever. I would have preferred that as a dominant theme, and would have been happy to let Barbra Streisand and Michael Jackson perform on the sidelines.
Even upon taking the oath, alas, Clinton faced troubling questions about his judgment. The nominations of two of his choices for Cabinet appointment seemed of doubtful worth and promised future trouble if allowed to remain. Ron Brown, named secretary of commerce, strove mightily for Clinton's election, and as national chairman of the Democratic Party did much else to reunite his party's warring wings. But he is a man deeply tainted by his long history as a powerful Washington lawyer and lobbyist. His unwillingness to pledge separation longer than a year from the influence of his former clients suggests that his appointment instantly contradicts Clinton's stated intention to reform national politics.
Zoe Baird, Clinton's nominee for attorney general, was marked by corruption before she even testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. She and her husband had hired illegal, undocumented aliens to take care of their small child in Connecticut. And though Baird freely confessed the crime, she also admitted she knew it was a questionable action from the first. The offense is so common against big-time lawyers and executives that it occasioned less criticism from Washington than it did from the rest of the country. Out here in the boondocks, however, it seemed no little thing, and many believe with me that Baird should either withdraw or be withdrawn before she embarrasses the Clinton administration further.
It is the old principle of Caesar's wife. But then, of course, Caesar's wife was not in show business.
Paxton Davis is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.