Abstract

Hail-to-the-Chief Show

The author comments on the U.S. President George W. Bush's inaugural and the outlook for an American security state. No President in recent history has been so adept at using pageantry to invest a radical new agenda with the authority of the past. In the George W. Bush inaugural, that moment came when the presidential motorcade headed down Pennsylvania Avenue enclosed in a phalanx of police vehicles. None of this showed on TV. In the new surveillance society, nothing is more important than maintaining the illusion of normalcy. TV commentators play an important part in this arrangement. They must reconcile the signs of ominous activity with the smooth surface. If anything, the locked and loaded ambience gave weight to Bush's speech, with its exhortation to endless war in the name of freedom and security. No pundit pointed out that this exercise in control was also a pretext for staging the most tightly managed inauguration in American history. Hundreds of thousands of spectators thought they were participating in a public event, when in fact they were extras on a giant set. When W. finally left his tank to walk a block or so, he strolled past a select crowd of admirers who had paid up to $300 for their VIP bleacher seats. Instead of addressing the racist taint of having Trent Lott host this event, the media focused on the many mentions of the civil rights struggle in the President's remarks. Every detail, down to W.'s dance with a black female soldier at a ball, had been calculated to send a certain message. This inaugural was about giving an aggressive, repressive agenda the aura of greatness. Under the pomp and circumstance, one could glimpse the contours of the coming American security state. Political pageants are like that. They show the future disguised as the past.