I have three non-political observations from Monday’s presidential inauguration activities.
1. I still love pomp and circumstance. I wrote about this four years ago and those opinions still hold true.
2. I love watching our past presidents interact with each other. Video of former President Bush’s facial expressions went viral after the ceremony with his daughter Jenna Bush Hager commenting, “You guys, you can’t just blame him because it looks like my dad was also seated next to a bad influence.” Jenna was, of course, referring to former President Obama and the close relationship the two share despite their political differences. Here’s a clip.
3. Kudos to Carrie Underwood for recovering from the technology issues and singing America the Beautiful a cappella style. I’m not proud of this, but I feel a little gratification seeing a mistake like this happen on the largest of stages. We all shoot for perfection, yet we’ve all suffered from these missteps. I was at a program last week where the technician had difficulty sinking a video to its sound, even though it worked perfectly during the equipment testing an hour earlier. Over the years, we’ve had sound, video, lighting, temperature, and a host of other inadvertent complications even though everything tested properly before their failures. After an awkward silent moment, Carrie moved on seamlessly. It was a great lesson for all of us.