Ever on the lookout for irony, The Scrapbook’s attention was drawn the other day to two stories—conven-iently situated next to one another—on the front page of the Washington Post Metro section. The first, entitled “D.C. readies for horde of inaugural protesters” (December 4), explained that hundreds of thousands of people are expected to arrive in Washington next month to protest Donald Trump’s inauguration, but capital officials are ready “with thousands of police officers and National Guard members from across the country.”
This was not a novel story, in The Scrapbook’s estimation, since we’ve read it before; but it seems only to occur when Republican presidents win elections and are sworn into office. That modern tradition began in January 1969, when Richard Nixon succeeded Lyndon Johnson and his inaugural parade route was lined in places with antiwar demonstrators, some of whom turned violent in the course of the day. The tradition was revived in 1981, when Ronald Reagan supplanted Jimmy Carter; in 1989, when George H. W. Bush succeeded Reagan; and again in 2001, when George W. Bush followed Bill Clinton. On that occasion The Scrapbook recalls, in particular, a large contingent of Yale undergraduates who held signs aloft “apologizing” for their fellow alumnus and jeering, at high volume, during his Inaugural Address.
