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The Coronation of King Obama
Jim Young / Reuters
The fanfare with which the president-elect will be inaugurated on Tuesday reminds the BBC’s Katty Kay of the pomp and circumstance adorning the British royals. It’s a shameful way to treat a president.
Why am I coming over all queasy this week? Oh, yes, it must be coronation—sorry, inauguration—week in the federation of the United States. So this is why you booted us out a couple of centuries ago. You simply replaced the pomp and ceremony of hereditary monarchy and with the pomp and ceremony of elected monarchy. OK, you didn't opt for the dynastic duo of Bush and Clinton, which really had us scratching our crowned European heads, but the fanfare with which Caroline Kennedy has entered the political picture suggests your infatuation with royal families is still not over.
This week Washington feels like London in the run up to one of our own grand royal events. Hostesses twitter on the phone, or just Twitter, to woo A-list guests to pre- and post-inauguration parties. A-list guests measure their piles of invites in feet, not inches (forget the endangered rain forest, this event justifies a few more trees), while the lowly populous frets over inaugural road closures and inconvenient security measures. The problem is, you've adopted circumstance without the scandal. Our royals do it much better.
Barack Obama has a four-year rental on the White House. We would do well to remember he doesn't possess the freehold.
Take this: In 1981, Charles marries Diana. She is the virgin princess who walks up the aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral, pulling a 25-foot ivory train, for a full 3.5 minutes (we counted, and given that most trips up the aisle last, what, 20 seconds max, it is one piece of trivia worth noting). Stores fast sold out of dainty china teacups emblazoned with the royal couple's shy smiles, just as stores here are doing a roaring trade in travel coffee mugs adorned with the Obamas' more confident grins. Sixty-thousand loyal Brits lined the streets to cheer Diana on, and, millions more watched the ceremony on television to hear the Prince of Wales fluff it. At the crucial moment His Royal Highness promised her not "my worldly goods" but "thy goods," which, when you're marrying one of the richest men in England, makes a difference. And that was not the worst of that particular royal ceremony's hitches.
Fast forward twenty years and many more than twenty tabloid scandals. In 2002, Charles marries Camilla. Enough said. Phew.
Obama's Presidency is unlikely to produce such fine pickings for the tabloids. Still, there is a more serious problem with treating Barack Obama as an elected monarch; one that affects us journalists, in particular. Put a man on a pedestal and suddenly it's hard for the press to drag him through the political wringer. It happened in 2003 in the run up to the invasion of Iraq and risks happening again.
In Britain, we invest the Queen with our ceremonial hopes which leaves us free to treat our prime minister as exactly what he is—an elected official, paid for by the taxpayers, and serving at the people's will. While George W. Bush was being asked patsy questions by a subdued White House press corps, Tony Blair was being drubbed by un-cowed political hacks. It is far easier to do when you don't stand the moment the man walks into the room.
Barack Obama has a four-year rental on the White House. We would do well to remember he doesn't possess the freehold.
America got rid of King George for good reason and it toyed recently with another dynastic George. Wasn't that enough? January 20 is indeed a day for celebration, as the world watches the peaceful transfer of power in Washington. I simply wish we could tone down the royal trappings just a smidge. Who really needs another coffee mug anyway?
Katty Kay covers American politics for the British Broadcasting Corporation. She is Washington correspondent for BBC World News America and has lived in DC for the past 12 years. She grew up in the Middle East and has reported from Africa and Tokyo. Kay is a regular contributor on Meet the Press, The Chris Matthews Show and a guest host for the Diane Rehm Show. She is the author, with Claire Shipman, of the upcoming book Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
Claire Shipman is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Shipman was the White House correspondent for NBC news and a reporter for CNN in Moscow, where she earned multiple awards for her coverage of the demise of the Soviet Union. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
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Katty Kay is the Washington Correspondent for BBC World News America. She is the author, along with Claire Shipman, of Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success. Kay has covered Washington since 1996 and is a contributor on "Meet the Press", "Larry King Live", "The Chris Matthews Show" and a regular guest host for Diane Rehm on NPR.
Claire Shipman is the senior national correspondent for ABC News' Good Morning America and a regular on This Week with George Stephanopoulos. Previously, Shipman was the White House correspondent for NBC news and a reporter for CNN in Moscow, where she earned multiple awards for her coverage of the demise of the Soviet Union. She currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children.
I doubt that adulteration of the Obamas will keep the press from dragging him through the political wringer. The press failed miserably during the Bush reign of terror, please don't try to tell me an over the top celebration will be the reason for their continued failure. I won't be buying any coffee mugs but nevertheless find this article superfulous and catty.
Katy, your article implies that anything Americans do is a K-Mart version of what is of course a bloody superior tradition in England. Guess what - we get the import and elegance of this event; we actually enjoy a bit of pomp and circumstance, American-style, knowing that the inauguration is not a coronation but a once-every-four-years celebration of the process that lets us change governments without riot, rancor, or revolution. And frankly, I'll take a coffee mug over mountains of tabloids any day.
I don't find this article "superfulous and catty" at all. this inauguration is getting out of hand. the dynasty thing (kennedy, etc) is ridiculous. the money spent on the inauguration (figures i've read are 50-100 million) could be put to better use. and the adulation and too-high expectations on this president are going to create serious problems for him once people discover that he's human, and also when he has to start making unpopular choices and decisions. i hope the press are tough, in a fair manner, on him.
all that said, i am very excited to see this new era begin, and hope that we're not wrong in having chosen him to lead the country.
"In Britain, we invest the Queen with our ceremonial hopes ...." What the heck are ceremonial hopes? Is there a point to this article? If so, I msised it.
If you don't like the events surrounding the innauguration, turn off your TV, but if you don't vote here, please mind your own business.
I have been noticing this, too. I was particularly interested in Stephen Colbert's "Countdown to Inauguration Advent Calendar," as he calls it. It is a picture of Obama with a royal crown on his head. It's disturbing. Bush and Cheney really believed they "ruled" the U.S. Nixon was another "Man Who Wanted To Be King."
But Obama is being put on a pedestal by too many. You can tell by comments at the end of articles like and on another site like HuffPo. The tone is Obama can do no wrong and people are lambasted if they criticize him. This happened, at great detriment to our country, with Bush -- you're either with or against him. Some famous performers lost their shows for criticizing, most notably Bill Maher. It wasn't until after 2004 that the criticism started without serious ramifications.
It's not that I think Obama will be running the show in this manner. No, I can't imagine him using a for-me-or-against-me line. I agree that America needs to remember that the President serves at our pleasure -- he is our employee -- and he needs to be held accountable.
I am sure that this so-called confidence will turn back to simply hope on Wednesday morning as people go back to their neighborhoods and see their landscape dotted with boarded-up houses and foreclosure and for sale signs, and the reality that just this past week another approximately 50,000 jobs is being lost (low estimate, considering that Circuit City alone is going to be responsible for a 30,000-job loss).
The secret to Obama's success is going to be us and how we communicate with his Administration and holding them accountable. There is a web site called Change.org, which was set up for Americans to express their feelings to the incoming Administration on our most pressing problems. It's quite an eye-opener. I hope this site thrives and informs and makes a difference, because that will be a break from our "royal" past and that crown on Obama's head will just be high comedy, not an indication of things to come.
It took an English to articulate what a few(?) of us think of the coronation - no quotation marks there - of Obama. (I voted for him, folks, lest you accuse me of being a Republican) What does this tell us about the American journalists?
I don't really get how the author thinks the Obamas are like a monarchy just because they are popular. Where was she when Bush II was inaugurated? I do see her point about Caroline Kennedy...and all the talk in the news about "the political gene" which is completely stupid. There are a lot of people who grow up in political environments and are charismatic, and with Caroline Kennedy it really is all about her name. I guess I don't get the connection with the Obamas. As for most journalists being liberal democrats, most people in this country are democrat...and if someone whose job is to research, question and find facts tends to lean a certain way, maybe we should have some faith in the work that person does. I just don't understand what the author is afraid is going to happen. Because if anyone is guilty of increasing executive power it's Bush II.
Pretending that because people are worked up and excited by a presidential inauguration it is somehow like the coronation of a monarch is as insipid as those who found Obama's ability to draw huge crowds during the campaign Hitler-esque.
A few major points.
1) Every new president has what they call a "honeymoon" with the media. A period of time right in the beginning where he is the most powerful and can get the most done because people want to give him a chance to fulfill his campaign promises without beating him up for every flubbed word. George W. Bush got a smaller honeymoon (because there was a lot of anger over the closeness of teh election) however, he did get one. Bill Clinton got one too and so did Bush senior and so did Ronald Reagan.
2) This honeymoon has never lasted forever and I can confidently assure you that this isn't going to last long with the economy the way it is.
3) Don't rain on our parade! We have been a fiercely divided nation for several years now, and we're finally enjoying just a month of bipartisanship and love for our leaders and you just want to dump all over it.
don't forget that parades and pedestals are ultimately for the crowds. katty is deep-down-dull.
We SHOULD be a divided nation. That"s what democracy is.
The cult of Obama has the whiff of Fascism. There, I said it.
I don't think you know what fascism means, aperturemad.
I don't think you know what democracy means either, as a matter of fact. Democracy just means we vote on what we want. Not that we can't vote for reasonable compromise rather than bitter partisanship for the sake of partisanship.
I agree, this is getting out of hand. Obama was hired to do a job. Let him get on with it.......
Katty, dahling, "A-list guests measure their piles of invites in feet, not inches (forget the endangered rain forest, this event justifies a few more trees), while the lowly populous frets over inaugural road closures and inconvenient security measures"?
I'm not sure how it is in Brit-land, but over here in the colonies, the lowly "populace" often make use of the "spell checking" feature of their word processors.
Not that I would like to sound pretentious. Nevah, evah!
Based on history I have confidence that journalists, liberal or not, eventually default to a mode of seeking fame by revealing that the powers that be have feet of clay or worse. With Obama, the question is how much this will be delayed by an apparent innate infatuation with him. After all, in all of history I cannot remember an instance where a member of the fourth estate reported a tingling feeling in his leg with regard to a future potential target. It will be entertaining.
How come the author saw it as a "coronation" only when a black person is elected? Why didn't she wrote the same article when Bush(white man) was being lavishly inaugurated in 2004? On this side of the atlantic we call such an attitiude racism.
Don't worry about me worshiping that crooked Chicago politician. He turns my stomach. He is the false messiah of the looney left. Gee, for athiests, they sure know how to worship!
I say, run Obama out of office in four years on a rail like that loser Jimmy Carter! There, that's not treating him like royalty, is it?
The big bash for Obambi just proves we have no problem with our ecomony.
This many people have all this money and time to take off from work just goes to show it's all a farce. Liberals certainly have enough money when they want to so the next time one of them come begging, I'll tell them to p*ss off.
to paraphrase st francis: when celebrating, smear the fat on the walls.
Ah, let the monarchy-lovers have their day. In a matter of weeks, the press will be treating Obama just like one of your prime ministers. We Americans have always lionized popular persons, political, entertainment or religious icons. For presidents, it doesn't last, especially not after the last few years left the righ-wing extremists in the woodwork just waiting a chance for revenge.
What a pointless bloody article, to equate hereditary coronation with elected celebration is beyond illogical.
Many Americans are ecstatic to have an intelligent president in the White House again after the tumultuous 8 years of Bush. Coupled with the fact that we are the first superpower to have elected someone who wasn't caucasian is also a huge step forward for human equality. How many Prime Ministers in the UK have been part African American? Way to much money is spent on these occassions, but that's just how it is, so to find that one thing to complain about is very shortsighted. Step outside of your paradigm Katty and smell the roses.
Thank you Katty. Excellent point. Now, how about a piece on American Political Royalty? Kennedy, Bush, the list goes on. It is time to end political royalty in America. Come out here to Flyoverland if you want to see it in action. The Carnahans, Clays, Blunts, they have everything except the titles.
What an appropriate name you have, Katty.
I would take this opinion piece more seriously if the author had actually detailed just what types of inaugural activities were being offered that deviate from the regular inaugural fare, which also smack of "the divine right of kings." In addition, the author provides no context for such a supposition, save for her thin references to whether Obama was treated with kid gloves during the nearly 2-year long election cycle. The whole piece comes off as superfluous, self-gratifying fluff, designed to ensure heat but no real discussion.
But most importantly, it appears that the author may have forgotten that the United States is in the midst of a deep economic recession and fighting a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan -- perhaps she would be more sympathetic to the view of the unemployed and oppressed who look to a new administration for relief if she actually spoke to those in attendance at the various inaugural activities... but one guesses hyperbole won out over substance today.
Thank you.
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