From: theleasthappyfella@gmail.com   
      
   Saturday, January 20, 1973 | Inauguration Day   
      
   It had been “one helluva show.” The Grieg piano concerto, in particular,   
   had been a revelation. Van Cliburn was superb: no one could match his   
   virtuosity. Of course, most of the Republican high rollers who feasted on   
   colonial roast duckling and    
   plantation pineapple in their tuxedos and long dresses—“clowns,” in   
   Richard Nixon’s estimation—“did not know what the hell was going on.”   
   But the president had thoroughly enjoyed both the music and the political   
   symbolism of the evening.   
      
   His arrival at the Kennedy Center had been heralded with “ruffles and   
   flourishes” from sixteen military trumpeters in full Ruritanian regalia. The   
   orchestras at each of the three inaugural concerts had blared out “Hail to   
   the Chief” as he entered    
   the presidential box, as per an “action memo” from his chief of staff, H.   
   R. “Bob” Haldeman. Best of all, he had succeeded in “sticking it to   
   Washington” by excluding the dreary, politically correct National Symphony   
   Orchestra from the    
   festivities. Instead, he had brought the outspokenly conservative Eugene   
   Ormandy down from Philadelphia to conduct the rousing finale to a wonderful   
   event.   
      
   The clanging church bells and simulated cannons of Tchaikovsky’s 1812   
   Overture were still reverberating in Nixon’s ears as he said good night to   
   the evening’s guest of honor, Mamie Eisenhower, at the front door of the   
   White House. He took the    
   mirror-paneled elevator to the residence on the second floor and then headed   
   left through a succession of grand hallways lined with books and paintings to   
   his private den in the far corner of the mansion. This was the Lincoln Sitting   
   Room, the smallest    
   room in the White House and his personal favorite. The cozy Victorian parlor   
   was the place where he did his best thinking and writing, scribbling his ideas   
   onto yellow legal pads to the booming strains of Victory at Sea. He settled   
   into his plush Louis    
   XV–style armchair, a birthday present from his wife Pat, resting his feet on   
   the matching ottoman. A black-and-white print of the Lincoln family hung on   
   the wall above his head, next to the window, which provided a perfect picture   
   frame for the    
   floodlit Washington Monument.   
      
   Snug in his sanctuary, Nixon gazed into a crackling fire set by his personal   
   valet, Manuel “Manolo” Sanchez. He was still dressed in the tuxedo he had   
   worn to the Kennedy Center, offset by black bow tie and gleaming presidential   
   cuff links. His hair,    
   dark brown with splotches of gray, was carefully brushed back, a sartorial   
   choice that emphasized his receding hairline and protruding widow’s peak.   
   His already thick jowls had filled out even more during his first four years   
   in office. Combined with    
   his darting eyes, they gave him a tortured look, as if he were perpetually   
   brooding over past slights and disappointments. The upturned, slightly twisted   
   nose, on the other hand, suggested a bumbling American everyman, like Walter   
   Matthau in a goofy    
   Hollywood comedy. Assembled together, it was a face that was neither handsome   
   nor ugly, distinguished nor plebeian. But it was certainly memorable.   
      
   It was already past midnight, but the thirty-seventh president of the United   
   States had no desire to sleep. In less than twelve hours, at noon, he would be   
   appearing on the steps of the Capitol to deliver his second inaugural address.   
   He was still    
   tinkering obsessively with the text. “As I stand in this place so hallowed   
   by history, I think of others who have stood here before me,” read one of   
   his last-minute tweaks. Another note reflected his determination to scale back   
   the Great Society that    
   his Democratic predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, had devoted so much energy to   
   constructing: “our goal for government—to take less from people so that   
   people can do more for themselves.”   
      
   Nixon read through the speech once more, fountain pen in hand, marking the   
   passages he wished to emphasize in dark blue ink. He underlined some phrases   
   and scratched in a few additions, until the text resembled a heavily annotated   
   sheet of music. He had    
   issued strict instructions that the speech not go “a word over 1200   
   words.” As with so many of his peremptory commands, the order had gone   
   unfulfilled, largely due to his own contradictory impulses. He had planned to   
   emulate Abraham Lincoln—who had    
   used just 701 words for his second inaugural address, one of the most   
   memorable in American history—but there was too much he wanted to say. In   
   the end, he had settled for a speech of 1,800 words, still reasonably short by   
   modern-day presidential    
   standards. He calculated that it would take sixteen minutes to deliver,   
   including applause.   
      
      
   As he prepared to take the oath of office for the second time, the son of the   
   struggling Quaker grocer had many reasons to celebrate, despite his   
   perpetually restless nature. He had been reelected by the largest margin of   
   popular votes of any president    
   in the nearly two-hundred-year history of the Republic. He had won the   
   grudging respect of the foreign policy crowd—that despised band of elitist   
   snobs—for the geostrategic brilliance of his opening to China. Most   
   gratifying of all, he was on the    
   cusp of concluding a peace agreement with the Communist government of North   
   Vietnam, heralding an end to a war that had cost the lives of fifty-eight   
   thousand Americans and countless Vietnamese. Four years previously, in his   
   first inaugural address, he    
   had described the “title of peacemaker” as “the greatest honor history   
   can bestow.” The road to peace had been long and bloody, but the prize was   
   finally within his grasp. The initialing of the peace accords was set for   
   January 23, just three    
   days away, in Paris.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)