Category Archives: Inauguration

All the President-Elect’s Men

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Remember the last scene of “All the President’s Men?” If you don’t, you can watch it above.

Pretty powerful. On a television on a desk in the newsroom of The Washington Post, Richard Nixon is seen triumphant, being inaugurated for the second time as president. In the background, across the newsroom, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (OK — Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, really) are not watching the event, because they’re too busy pounding out one of the stories that will bring Nixon down.

We experienced a moment like that tonight. In a prelude to the inauguration of Donald Trump next week, President Barack Obama was delivering a particularly graceful valedictory address — our last worthy, fit president reminding us of the values that America is supposed to be about. The feeling of the passing of American greatness was palpable. We had a good run there, for 44 presidents. Or 43, if you leave out James Buchanan.

Half of Twitter — including me (you can go peruse my Tweets) — was writing about that. The other half was writing about this, which corresponds to the counterpoint of Woodstein hammering away at the story that will doom the new president. Check this out:

Or this version:

Or, if you’re into the salacious, this:

Wow. I mean, just… wow.

This is early. The picture is incomplete. There’s always the chance that, as Trump claims, this is “FAKE NEWS – A TOTAL POLITICAL WITCH HUNT!” After all, there’s a lot of that going around lately.

But I have never, ever heard of allegations like this, however flimsy, being made about anyone about to become president of the United States. That alone makes this unprecedented.

The report alleges that, while Trump turned down some sweet deals offered by the Russians, “he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals.” Yeah, and “FSB has compromised Trump through his activities in Moscow sufficiently to be able to blackmail him.”

Who knows at this point what’s true? For their part, though, our top intelligence chiefs found it worthy of passing on to the current and future presidents last week.

Here’s a caveat in The Guardian‘s story:

Despite glowing references from US and foreign officials who have worked with the source, there are some errors in the reports. One describes the Moscow suburb of Barvikha as “reserved for the residences of the top leadership and their close associates”, but although it is a very expensive neighbourhood, there are no restrictions on who can own property there. The document also misspells the name of a Russian banking corporation…

Must give us pause. But speaking of misspellings, The Guardian mentioned “Senator Lyndsey Graham” in the same story.

I don’t know where this is going to go. But it feels like one of those moments. You know, like in the movie…

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Hoedown

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I‘ve just come back with some video and other material from MLK Day activities, and before I start processing it, I realize I haven’t posted this bit from the inaugural barbecue last Wednesday night. I won’t offer much in the way of setup beyond what I said on YouTube:

The crowd
was thin and it was hard to talk, but those who showed did their best
to enjoy themselves at the barbecue celebrating Gov. Mark Sanford’s
second inauguration, Jan. 10, 2007.

Oh, I will say this — sorry about the shaky, inaccurate camera work. I now realize that my shoot-from-the-hip style I use in meetings works a lot better in our board room, with a table to steady the camera. Trying to hold it low and be unobtrusive while walking around talking to folks at a barbecue doesn’t work as well. Another lesson learned.

Paul! Laurin!

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Demarco07

Once again, we run into our intrepid correspondent, Dr. Paul DeMarco, at a political event (in this case, Wednesday’s inauguration ceremonies).

But Paul wasn’t just slumming. As usual, he had come down from Marion on a mission to help South Carolina. He had just attended the last meeting of Jim Rex’s transition team. I asked him to write us something about the experience — either for the paper or the blog — and I think he will.

Meanwhile, I had the privilege of meeting our good friend Laurin Manning for the first and second times Wednesday. She introduced herself at a post inaugural reception for 2nd-term Attorney General Henry McMaster. Then, that night, I ran into her again at the governor’s barbecue. That’s her friend Rebecca Dulin with her at the party. These two lovely young ladies will be featured in my barbecue video, which is in post-production, and which you can expect to see tonight, or tomorrow, or sometime between now and Sunday. I’m going to go get dinner now…

Laurin

Inaugural teaser

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Here is the essential existential conflict of the Blogosphere. You can either:

  1. Sit around in your PJs eating Skittles and drinking coffee, staring at a screen and doing an admirable job of keeping your blog up-to-date; or
  2. Go out and experience life, and see and hear and do things that would be worth writing about on the blog — and that would add a much-needed sense of reality to the discussions — but then you don’t have time to blog.

Anyway, that’s been my conundrum.

So I went to the inaugural ceremonies this morning, and I went to the governor’s barbecue tonight, and I took notes and collected video and still art, etc., but I haven’t had time to do anything with the footage I shot, and now I’m worn out and ready for bed.

I was going to put together a little video montage from this morning’s events, but I had just loaded part of it into my editing software this evening before I had to run (I had to go to The State‘s "20 Under 40" reception before I went to the barbecue). So here’s a trailer, or teaser or preview, or whatever you want to call it, from this morning — sans title, credits, and with most of the material missing:

I’ll try to give you something more complete before the week’s out.

I realize a REAL blogger would have had this up less by 2 p.m. today, but let’s face it — I’m a dilettante at this. I’ve got this full-time day job that often spills well into the night. All I can do is keep trying.