THE formal transfer of power to a new President of the U.S. is always a solemn moment. It is also a moment of promise, a time for hopeful pledges rather than penitential litanies. Columbia Historian Henry Graff calls the act of transition "America's stirring rite of political renewal." The mood of Inauguration 1969 is neither the bleak desperation of 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt succeeded Herbert Hoover amid the Great Depression, nor the partisan exhilaration of 1965, after Lyndon Johnson had been elected in his own right. The U.S. is in grave crisis, yet the President-elect has revealed little of his design; he has remained immured in his Manhattan headquarters, working long hours but making few public statements. Washington waits this week with quiet anticipation for the installation of Richard Nixon, uncertain about the tone and thrust of his presidency, but looking happily forward to the fun and fanfare of the celebration.
It will not be the exuberant, swinging blowout that began the Kennedy years, with a seemingly endless inaugural parade and partying through the night. For four days, the capital will whirl sedately with genteel Republican merrymaking, beginning with an All-American Gala in the District of Columbia Armory, produced by Ed McMahon of the Tonight Show (see TELEVISION). For $10 to $100 a ticket, the guests will get Ed and his boss Johnny Carson, Dinah Shore, Lionel Hampton, James Brown, Marguerite Piazza, Tony Bennett, Hugh O'Brian and Hines, Hines & Dad. The night before Inauguration, Salt Lake City's 350-strong Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Soprano Anna Moffo and Pianist Andre Watts will hold forth at a concert honoring the President-elect and his Vice President in Constitution Hall; the house is already nearly sold out, at prices ranging from $5 for a terrace seat to $500 for a five-seat box. Orchestra seats are $35.
Horses and Dukes. Unseasonably balmy weather is predicted for Inauguration Day itself, in happy contrast to the eight inches of snow that buried Washington just before the Kennedy Inauguration eight years ago. After Nixon takes the oath from Chief Justice Earl Warren at noon on the Capitol steps and delivers his inaugural address, the two-hour parade—shortest in memory, timed to end while there is still enough light for color-television cameras—will get under way up Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Nixon, Vice President Agnew and their families will watch from a heated presidential box enclosed in bulletproof glass; lesser spectators will look on from bleachers pounded together out of hundreds of miles of top-grade Douglas fir. The paraders will include 56 bands—among them the group from Nixon's old high school in Whittier, Calif.—cadets and midshipmen from the service academies, 13-year-old Vicki Cole of Deshler, Ohio, carrying her "Bring Us Together" poster on one of the 39 floats, three Lipizzaner horses, and the French Dukes drill team from Ann Arbor, Mich.