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Almost two million celebrants--1.5m in the Mall, 400,000 in the side streets--braved the 19F cold to cheer their new President. "Festive, excited," NBC's Ron Allen called them, "so many people, especially people of color, said they could not imagine not being there." ABC's Bill Weir filed from the Lincoln Memorial at the other end of the Mall: "Never have so many people shivered so long with such joy. From above even the seagulls must have been awed by the blanket of humanity." On CBS, Byron Pitts picked up on a couple of phrases on the lips of the crowd: Proud to be an American, "we heard that phrase over and over" and spiritual, "not just from churchgoing people."
After the ceremonies, when the new President and the new First Lady left their limousine to join the Inaugural Parade "it was a moment of pure excitement," reported CBS' Sharyl Attkisson. "For a President known for his eloquence, this was his supporters' turn to speak and speak they did. Some exploded in cheers; others ran alongside to keep up."
Bob Schieffer, anchor of CBS' Face the Nation, begged: "Excuse me for being Pollyanna," as he predicted that the enormous crowd would act to pressure politicians to cooperate across party lines. "This was such a wonderful day," the observer of inaugurations since Lyndon Johnson rejoiced. "Twelve of them I have seen and I never saw one like this one."
NBC anchor Brian Williams asked historian Doris Kearns Goodwin what the ingredients are for an historic inauguration. She came up with two categories. Did the new President break a barrier? Was there a national crisis? Her first examples were Andrew Jackson, the first non-aristocrat, and John Kennedy, the first Roman Catholic. Her second examples were Abraham Lincoln, before secession, and Franklin Roosevelt, in the depths of the Great Depression. A President who lives up to expectations that he will change people's lives is very rare, she conceded. Yet she still wondered, 100 years from now, whether there will be historians like her asking: "What was it like on the day when Barack Obama became President?"
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