• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 21, 2025

It was all there on TV -- the pageantry, tradition and smooth transition of power of a presidential inauguration that never fails to move me on a gut level.

Trump. Not Trump. Whatever. For the duration of Inauguration Day, Americans -- as embodied by our elected leadership in attendance -- can at least seem to be united on the rightful way to replace one president with another.

The presence of the former presidents and their wives, along with the outgoing president and vice president, give a sign -- if for just a moment -- that political foes can be civil.

Where Monday’s inauguration of President Trump was concerned, the civility may have gone out the window when he delivered an inauguration address that was a scathing critique of the outgoing administration while Biden and Harris sat a few feet away. But more on that later.

It was my late mother who many years ago instilled in me a love of state events such as inaugurations and state funerals. She loved them.

I think of her whenever one of these things is on TV. At such times, the bare-knuckled politics that precedes an inauguration hardly enters my mind.

With the inauguration moving inside the Capitol Rotunda due to the frigid Washington weather, viewers were able to enjoy the great surroundings filled with patriotic paintings and statues of great Americans.

The ones on view included statues of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant flanking the portal from which officials made their entrances, and Martin Luther King, on whose national holiday the inauguration was held.

The parade of official Washington included the Supreme Court justices, leaders of the House and Senate, the former Presidents and First Ladies except for Michelle Obama, President Biden and Vice President Harris and their spouses (who preceded them), members of the Trump and Vance families and the honorees themselves, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and President-elect Trump -- traditionally the last to enter.

I loved the spiritual messages of New York Archbishop Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Franklin Graham and after President Trump’s inaugural address, Detroit Pastor Lorenzo Sewell (especially him).

I loved the music provided by the United States Marine Band. As always, I loved the taking of the oaths of office, with the presidential oath, by long tradition, administered by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

As for Trump’s speech, it covered oil drilling, deportations, gender issues, military strength, urban crime, the Panama Canal and other hot topics. Is his plan to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America for real? 

As a long-time columnist writing on the subject of TV, the political realm is not a minefield I am comfortable navigating.

But it was not lost on me that Trump’s speech was crammed with controversial talking points that should keep the cable news yakkers up to their necks in material for days if not weeks.

But from a TV standpoint, the pictures and audio came off without a hitch, up until Carrie Underwood stood up with microphone in hand to sing “America the Beautiful” and she was required to stand there and wait for an interminable amount of time.

Apparently, a glitch denied her any musical accompaniment -- and if I heard correctly, there might also have been something wrong with a teleprompter that was supposed to provide the lyrics for her too.

It was tempting for a cynic to wonder how such a thing could happen at such an important moment, but that’s life in America sometimes. 

In the end, resourceful Carrie sang the song a capella and Inauguration Day was saved.