Inauguration day dawned clear but cold In Washington, as the crowds made their way to the Capitol to witness the swearing in of the new president.  The new chief magistrate elected ten weeks before was an unusual kind of candidate, defeating his Republican rival by promising to bring change to a nation wearied by economic upset and political upheaval.
Like hundreds of thousands of others, I rose early that morning to walk to the Capitol.  The day was January 20, 1977, and the new president was Jimmy Carter.  I was 18, working as a Congressional Page, and lived just a few blocks from the Capitol.  By some miracle I managed to get some wonderful photographs of the swearing-in and parade as I watched the Carters stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Thirty two years later I attended a similar, yet very different kind of inaugural.  The similarities lie with the men themselves, both relative newcomers to national politics, outsiders in some ways, running as agents of change to a roiled nation, and both possessed of a dazzling smile.  The differences, beyond their personal heritage, lie more with the event itself.  The inaugural of 1977 was the last to take place on the east front of the Capitol building, the end of a tradition dating back to 1829 and Andrew Jackson.
Ronald Reagan moved the ceremony to the west front of the Capitol in 1981, sparking a mild controversy.  While traditionalists fretted about the break with precedent, there was also a more practical worry:  The west front of the Capitol was crumbling and many worried that some dignitaries might get beaned by a falling chunk of the building!  
Reagan made the move for practical and symbolic reasons.  The practical reason allowed more people to see the ceremony from the Mall instead of the less spacious east front.  In 1977, I was one of “only” 350,000 people attending the Carter ceremony whereas 500,000 viewed Reagan’s inaugural four years later.
The symbolism of facing west was perhaps more important to the president-elect. A Californian, Reagan wanted to address the nation facing, as he felt, America’s future.  
I was on the road last Tuesday at 8:15 am, walking the four miles from my place in Arlington to the Mall.  Deciding to attend the inaugural was a last minute affair.  I’m a full time graduate student at George Washington University and a couple of weeks ago decided to just hunker down and stay in DC even though the University was closed for two days.  Although there is a subway stop right across the street, I knew it would be far easier to just walk.
 By 9:45 I was at the base of the Washington Monument, with a view of the White House and more importantly, a Jumbotron. By this time this spot was as good as it was going to get. By 10 am, if you didn’t have a place with a clear view of a big screen, then you were out of luck.
There I stood in a permeating cold that few seemed to mind for the next four hours. As noon approached I kept expecting air traffic from National airport to be shut down. It wasn’t, so I can only imagine the view those fortunate passengers enjoyed from the air.
The festivities were running late, and the length of Pastor Rick Warren’s invocation drew a few comments, as did his odd pronunciation of the names of President Obama’s two children. None of that compared however to the collective gasps when Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the simple, 35-word oath of office (remember, this wasn’t exactly a nonpartisan crowd).  
Initially the crowd didn’t completely hush, but the volume of the buzz dropped dramatically as the President began his speech.  The buzz died completely as he hit his stride and there things remained for the rest of his 20 minute inaugural address.  It wasn’t quite as lyrical a speech as I expected, but given our current circumstances, it was not an occasion for purely rhetorical embellishments. The key passage for me was “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
With the speech over, the crowd headed for the exits, wherever they were, and largely ignored the poem and benediction that concluded the ceremony.  Trust me, it was a heck of a lot easier getting in than getting out.  The mass movement of the crowd kicked up a large cloud of dust across the mall. Fortunately it was a well behaved and mellow crowd, although a few souls managed to mount and walk across the tops of the thousands of port a potties lining Constitution Avenue.
It took about an hour to trudge the half mile to the exits near 17th Street. Seeing the thick crowds streaming towards Pennsylvania Avenue, I headed back to Arlington, where an hour later I arrived back safe and sound – though chilled to the bone.  Like that day in 1977, the day was memorable. Despite the cold, it was a memorable event just like that earlier January day which the historian in me will never forget.
Now begins the hard part.