The inauguration: an almost ringside seat

The inauguration of Donald Trump looks different if you are very close to it, as I currently am (living a stone’s throw from the Capitol). Sure, some things don’t change. The media on both sides of the Atlantic are keen to follow the scrutiny of Mr Trump’s appointments, and to speculate about what his first days in office will accomplish. But thereafter interests diverge.

There is predictably even more interest here than in the UK in the line-up of guests and the glitzy parties and dinners that I, naively, had not fully realized were a high spot of the celebrations (and a nice little earner, when tickets for a table go at up to a million dollars). I haven’t caught a lot of interest here in the plight of Arron Banks, apparently not allowed into the US to host his own fringe gathering. But the inauguration events, and pre-inauguration celebrations, of Mr Trump and Mr Vance really do take centre stage: Trump’s in the amazing Building Museum, Vance’s in the equally amazing National Gallery. I can only hope that both of them realize that museums in this city are not just convenient locations for inauguration parties but need federal funding to keep going between these swanky occasions.

And there is even more attention on who will be going to what part of the celebrations. Where, for example, is Michelle Obama, neither attending President Carter’s funeral, nor Trump’s big day? She may be unwell or grounded for other reasons; let’s hope not. But the inauguration must have been in her diary for months (doesn’t look much like “when they go low, we go high”).

What you see from really close up, though, is fascinating for different reasons. It’s the huge infrastructure that underlies it. On my walk to work, at the National Gallery just off Pennsylvania Avenue (down which the procession will pass), the streets are being (literally) hoovered to within an inch of their life, the remains of the snow have been shifted, flags have been hung on almost every lamppost, the homeless have been relocated (I hope) to warm accommodation off the streets, every manhole cover has been prodded and probed – and in the National Gallery itself the windows have been cleaned and polished to perfection. Meanwhile barriers to pen people in (or out?) have been erected along almost every sidewalk near our apartment, and emergency medical wagons and temporary loos are starting to appear.

It’s all this that has made me retreat to New York for the occasion. I don’t resent the celebration. Trump won fair and square, even if I would not have voted that way. And I suspect that living near the routes of a coronation or royal funeral in the UK would be very similar. But I don’t feel that that this is my place, and I am off to the Siena exhibition at the Met (soon to come to the National Gallery in the UK). Looks good, and more my cup of tea.

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