■ We always said you couldn’t trust them with the silver; we didn’t know to mean it literally.
■ George W. Bush’s inaugural address was an impressive one. Even bitter-end chad-massagers like Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker admitted that it was graceful and thoughtful. And at fourteen minutes, it was a welcome retreat from the average Clinton speech, with its bloat. There was another implicit rebuke of Clintonism in it, too: When Bush asked Americans to be “citizens, not spectators,” this was typical civic-minded rhetoric; hut when he asked them to be “citizens, not subjects,” he was calling an end to eight years of sycophancy, legal double standards, and droit du seigneur. He wanted citizens to devote themselves to his compassionate conservative agenda: “Persistent poverty is unworthy of our nation’s promise.” Alexander Hamilton, one of the few poor-boy Founders, might have agreed; let us hope Bush’s understanding of the dynamics of wealth-formation is as supple and hardheaded as his was. Bush ended by declaring that Americans are not the authors of their own story. That Author “fills time and eternity with His purpose. Yet His purpose is achieved in our duty . . .” Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State probably wanted those words blue-penciled, but he’ll just have to take it to court.
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