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Wait! We're Not Done with Bush Yet...

3:18 PM, January 19, 2009 | Comments (25)
Celebratory is a safe way to describe the mood in Washington. And not just for Barack Obama's big day on Tuesday. When Obama raises his right hand, it will mark for millions of his supporters the end of something else. At Dupont Circle in Northwest Washington,...

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Posted Tuesday, November 11, 2008 5:44 PM

Presidential Platforms

Daniel Stone


If reading the morning headlines weren't enough of a hint to President Bush that his days are numbered, he need only look out his window to get the message. Exactly one week after Barack Obama's election--which, mind you, is already 10 percent of the transition period--workers in the current president's front yard are feverishly constructing a massive reviewing stand that traditionally greets the new president and his family after the inauguration ceremony to watch the day's parade. In space usually reserved for gawking tourists (and the locals who walk through would-be family portraits) is a fenced-off area with a sign that rather blandly states exactly what's going on: "Building of the inaugural stands." (Tourists -- and reporters -- love to ask questions; the sign, added this week, now ensures some unlucky police officer doesn't have to constantly answer the same one).

When finished, the structure will be a 25-foot tall, fully enclosed, heated and carpeted room for the new first family and about 50 guests. "It's really going to be massive," a White House police officer told me while admiring the beginnings of the platform. "And probably damn expensive too," chimed in his partner. (A White House spokesperson did not know the cost of the platform, or even who pays for it.)

But the White House reviewing stand isn't the only building that's going into Obama's big day. At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the construction of the main centerpiece kicked off more than two months ago (although the planning and design of the structure started a year ago). A 10,000 square foot platform, which is also designed to accommodate people with disabilities, will support the actual swearing-in ceremony for the president and vice president and more than 2,000 of their guests -- members of congress, governors, Supreme Court justices, diplomats and other insiders in a city where it pays to know someone who knows someone.

The endgame for the construction workers, for now, is January 20, but both enormous structures (and the pair of adjacent and also enormous risers for TV cameras) will have to be deconstructed after the big day. And rather than hang onto the materials or transport the expensive structures in pieces to sit in a hanger in someplace rural but close like, say, Virginia, the website of the Senate Inaugural Committee pridefully points out that the platforms are always "constructed entirely from scratch." One of those White House officers said it pretty well: "Hey man, this is America, why would you think they'd cut any corners."
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