VIEW A GALLERY OF THE IMAGES
There was another side to the inauguration of Barack Obama. This is the story from behind the scenes, described in an extraordinary series of photographs by Callie Shell, images of a family preparing for an extraordinary public responsibility. Shell had unprecedented access to the Obamas throughout the election campaign and here her camera captures the events backstage as the grand finale unfolds. They offer a glimpse of events far from the pageantry, oratory and noise; moments of family intimacy, private contemplation, and history in the making.
The transfer of power in Washington was the largest, loudest, best-organised, most colourful, celebrity-studded and strangest inauguration ever held.
It began with a cold snap and ended in a blizzard of executive orders. The right-handed white Republican President gave way to a mixed-race Democrat self-proclaimed “leftie”. Two million people converged on Washington DC, cheered, paraded, danced then poured out again, leaving behind 130 tonnes of inaugural rubbish.
The age of Bush limped to an end, widely unmourned, and the era of Obama began at a sprint, with a sobering gust of rhetoric, an all-night bash and a mighty task in hand.
It was cold on Tuesday morning. So cold that shivering, blue-fingered journalists in the National Mall wondered how many of the predicted millions would show up. They did come, marching out of the frost like a vast padded-jacketed army, young and old, Democrat but also Republican, white, Hispanic and foreign.
A majority of expectant faces in the crowd were black — 139 years after the first African-American cast his vote the political ground had shifted.
In the VIP stand very cold, very famous people began to assemble as if for an Oscar ceremony in a walk-in freezer. No work was done in Hollywood this day: here were Steven Spielberg, Dustin Hoffman, John Cusack and Denzel Washington. There was much neck-craning as royalty itself arrived and Oprah Winfrey took her seat.
Not quite all hatchets were buried. The Carters, it is said, snubbed the Clintons in the corridors of power. Senator Edward Kennedy, seriously ill with brain cancer and wearing a large hat, waved to the crowd in a frail reminder of another time and another young presidency of infinite promise.
The Obamas, meanwhile, entered their new home for coffee with the Bushes. It was a moment of traditional protocol agony that the outgoing President undermined by grinning broadly and blowing kisses to the White House when he left.
Dick Cheney appeared in a wheelchair after straining his back moving boxes. There was something about his glacial grin that suggested that the Vice-President was grimly aware of the irony of being wheeled out of office, feet first.Two dozen outriders formed a spear-shape ahead of the motorcade and screamed away as the President and President-elect sat side-by-side in a limousine for the last time, and quite possibly the first.
The Obama children, sweet and smart in J. Crew outfits, took their seats. Their mother, Michelle, wore a lemongrass-yellow coat and matching dress with green leather gloves. George Bush Sr peered out from beneath an enormous fur hat that made him look like a retired Davy Crockett. Mr Obama wore a smile of half-wonder when he walked loose-limbed down the steps to a booming compere’s voice announcing: “Bar-Rak . . . H . . . O-Bah-Mah!”.
Aretha Franklin hammered out My Country, ’Tis of Thee. The Queen of Soul was entirely upholstered in shimmering grey and topped with a colossal shiny bow hat. Respect. A quartet composed of the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the violinist Itzhak Perlman, the pianist Gabriella Montero and the clarinetist Anthony McGill, playing along with a pre-taped classical medley (it was too cold for a genuine live concert) and the crowd pretended to like it as much as they had liked Aretha.
Mr Obama rose to take the oath and suddenly the moment went wobbly. After two years of campaign speeches, millions of lines of oratory delivered word perfect, the new President was unable to say the 35 words of the oath in the correct order. Was it nerves? Was it John Roberts, the Chief Justice, feeding him the wrong cue? Was this revenge for Mr Obama failing to vote for the confirmation of Mr Roberts in 2005? Or did his concentration lapse when he cracked a joke when a footstool was drawn up for Sasha, 7, to stand on: “That’s for you,” he said to his wife, who is as tall as he is.
Whatever the reason, according to some constitutional theorists Mr Obama did not become President, which made his deputy Joe Biden, albeit briefly, the president. Mr Biden did not take advantage of this sudden honour.
The words of Mr Obama’s speech were similarly unexpected. Many had come anticipating soaring oratory, the punchy optimism of the “Yes we can” candidate.
Instead he spoke of crisis and challenges ahead, of America’s ability to renew itself. It is a time, he warned, of “gathering clouds and raging storms”, winter in the world: the crowd cheered — but wrapped their jackets a little tighter.
After a poem that even its author, Elizabeth Alexander, seemed to have trouble remembering, the new first couple glided down Pennsylvania Avenue in the bulletproof limousine, finally emerging in the dying light to greet the crowd and holding hands as they walked past the great monuments of US power.
For the next two hours the President stood his ground manfully while 13,000 people marched past in the inaugural parade. He waved at native Americans on horseback from the Crow nation that has adopted him, he saluted the military bands and made the ‘shaka’ sign — the traditional hang-loose gesture of Hawaii — to a band from Punahou school in Honolulu, his alma mater.
By this point, 15 hours into the celebrations, Mr Obama must have wished he was back in Hawaii on a beach. Instead he changed into his white tie and tails and set off to dance at ten parties before ten adoring crowds. The Obamas swayed to I’ve Been Loving You So Long. The President stepped on the hem of the Jason Wu gown that his wife was wearing but made up for it. “How good-looking is my wife?” he asked the crowd. It was a statement, not a question.
By 1am the Obamas were asleep, for the first time, in the private residence at the White House . . . and four hours later the lights were on again.
By 8.35am Rahm Emanuel, the new Chief of Staff, was already briefing the President in the Oval Office. Mr Emanuel is someone who likes waking people up.
The President attended a morning prayer service in Washington National Cathedral, attended by 3,200 people and church leaders from 20 faiths. There followed a first day of punishing presidential hyper-activity as Mr Obama set about dismantling the Bush legacy with the same unsentimental vigour as the workers on the Mall pulling apart the scaffolding from the day before. In the space of 12 hours the President proposed the closure of the Guantánamo Bay prison camp, demanded a higher ethical code, issued a pay freeze for senior staff, discussed the $800 billion spending package, held a video conference with his national security team and generals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and called four Middle East leaders to talk about a peace initiative.
The executive orders, followed by others banning torture and closing so-called ghost prisons abroad, were signed, one after the other, with his left hand. “I’m a leftie,” he said. “Get used to it.”
Obama-mania showed little sign of abating: the website for J. Crew crashed, and its share price soared thanks to the outfits worn by the Obama children.
The repudiation of the Bush years could not have been more explicit: “It is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and moral high ground to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that we see emanating from terrorist organisations,” he said.
In possibly the most surreal moment of the entire inauguration week, about 30 hours after he had been sworn in, Mr Obama did it again. “We decided it was so much fun,” he said.
Some had begun to question whether the first, mangled oath was really valid and so, like some presidential Groundhog Day, the scene was re-enacted, this time in private. “The bad news for the reporters is that there are 12 more balls,” he joked.
“Are you ready to take the oath?” asked Chief Justice Roberts, a second time. “I am,” said the President. “And we’re going to do it very slowly.”
That was the only slow moment in a week that passed in a whirlwind of change, of pageantry and pomp but also of unscripted informality and one hilarious snafu; a week in which a black man took up residence in the White House and claimed the moral high ground, demonstrating that this double-oathed President intends to do nothing by halves.
