Most vividly did the Inauguration present the landscape architecture of Washington, D.C. Vast tracts of flat Mid-Atlantic coastland ingrained and plotted with figurative visage, “from a cause to a style,” and that style is Federal Government. The environs made room for millions of spectators, the January sun was a revelator of the National Mall and the Capitol grandstand where the U.S. brass emerged, lions and tigresses of the modulor.  If the 1789 Congress first met in New York City, a place infused with French precedents, then of course a Frenchman, L’Enfant, would be commissioned to design the Legislature’s new home, in a superstucture city. Alexander Hamilton assumed the burden of the suckling nation’s debts, and Jefferson took care of the civic engineering.

“Transparency and the rule of  law. . .” The first principle adapts to new conditions, the second pays allegiance to old ways.

Gatherings of public figures as found on Inauguration Day resemble the cast of a big-budget movie. Onscreen, in the movie, the characters play out a drama: opposite sides wielded, the avenging of bicameral principles, heroic clashes of wits. But then, offscreen, at the Awards party, the cast is all hanging out all smiles and gladhanding and sweet-kissing. They are now behind-the-scenes, and for the audience, who knew these people as imaginative characters, it shouldn’t be as comforting to watch the actors cavort as the experience ineluctably is. America loves spectacle and likes to wink knowingly and drunkenly at the camera, but however contextualized by superstardom the election year has been, Obama’s poise of first confidence is as a Statesman.

And if there is one thing the Election made clear, it is that America does not want a Baby Boomer as president: Obama just under, and McCain just above. Like all generations, Boomers have been both grave pioneers and spectacular foisters of truth. This is a generation that would riot against after voting for the Bush soundtrack of terror. The current culture is bent over, one that takes whatever is ready to be given, with only a cheap, half glance over the shoulder to what is about to be shoved up – people take it and then spew the behavior all out again as if they made it up themselves, the simulacrum of an imagination where no imagination exists. The country is still inspired by the Judeo-Christian orthodox holding that one must pay dearly for good things, a whipping for glory, where there is no nuance, no in-between, only severe stark contrasts, as if it were a time when The Canterbury Tales had not yet been written. So from Bush, comes Obama, and a bandwagonnery of hope not seen since world war.