As any seasoned performer will tell you, never overplay an anticlimax. Ronald Reagan knows that better than most, and his second Inaugural, a four-day wingding that begins this Friday, will be quieter, more controlled and a good deal less ostentatious than his first. The Inaugural, America's 50th, is being carefully crafted by the soon-to-depart Michael Deaver and the Presidential Inaugural Committee to rein in spending and promote a new egalitarian image for the Administration. Its theme: "We the People . . . An American Celebration."
After his record-setting $16.3 million, nouveau-riche extravaganza in 1981, the President had raised the possibility of...