Sunday, May 24, 2009
Assessing the Installation
(Another column from the Nashville Free Press.)
This is aside from the headline in The Onion, “Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job,” although I certainly agree with that. But what does it mean to be “installed?”
Originally (the Oxford English Dictionary's first citation is from 1548), this was used strictly for bishops and other churchmen. One of the many advantages of being a bishop is that you don't have to sit in a regular pew with the peasants. You get a special seat, in a row of seats, slightly recessed so that you have walls and armrests at your sides. When you are officially invested with your authority as bishop, you get the right to the bishop's stall. You are placed in the stall (much as at an investment into office you are put in the specific clothing--vestments--of that position, robes and sashes and whatnot).
Although we (sadly, perhaps) lack an official costume of the presidency (some countries do still have sashes), we do have an official seat. It is not the chair itself--presidents get to pick from an assortment of chairs--but its location in the Oval Office that makes it the boss's chair. The tradition of departing presidents leaving notes for their successors, even if they switch desks, lends this weight. So the new president, after taking the oath, is entitled to do business from the presidential chair in the presidential office.
Of course, most of what we watched on January 20 was not part of the installation. There were only two elements of all the presentations that had binding value, and they were the administration of the two oaths, for vice president and president. (“Administer,” as you may have guessed, comes from an Anglo-Norman root meaning to officiate at a religious ceremony.) Those oaths constitute the actual inauguration.
So what does that mean, “inaugurate?” Does it have anything to do with drilling a hole in the ground? No. (That's “auger.”) The Latin root is inaugurare, to read omens from the flight of birds. Before making any change in government, it would only make sense (to a pious Roman) to see what could be divined about the consequences of the change. We may have lost our faith in omens, but 68% of us (according to last year's Pew poll) believe we have guardian angels. Consulting or relying on the supernatural is second nature to us.
Bringing a new president in office is cloaked with words that tie it to a religious rite, a solemn obligation. The words try to remind us of the importance of the moment, of the words of the oath--words so important that they had to be administered twice, you will recall.
This is all fitting for a man who chooses his words as well and as carefully as our new president. I expect the next four years to give us a lot of language worth thinking about.
