The Obamas Satisfy America’s Love of Royalty

As if a dam of frigid air burst on the northern border, a bitter cold front has spilled down from Canada and into Washington, DC: the kind of skin-drying, blister-making, crinkling cold that you have to experience to appreciate.

Perhaps it is a fitting way to prepare the Obama administration for its inauguration: a warm and festive greeting to what is sure to be a challenging presidency. For now, though, the miseries of job losses and collapsing asset values have been shoved aside for a week-long party. Washington’s restaurants are doing a booming, reservations-only trade as hundreds of thousands of the great and good pour into the capital, hoping to score prime seats to the events. The hotels are tripling their rates and sending away any guests booking less than three nights.

With the city’s streets girding to close on Monday, at the same time that the bars and nightclubs are allowed to stay open all night, taxi and limo drivers stand to do their best business in years. They will be among the few Washingtonians cheering the cold front, since ladies in ball gowns with drunken, cash-laden husbands or boyfriends will snap up rides faster than they can drive.

Why all this excitement for a few words and a hand on a Bible? Americans bristle if you suggest that they are crowning their president. You’ll get a civics lesson on the glory of their republic. But the truth is, Americans like royals; just listen to the accents outside Buckingham Palace. And they want their president not only to be a capable administrator, but a good family man with a distinguished wife.

Back in the days of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, whenever foreign journalists snickered at the prudery of Americans (a favourite pastime), I thought they missed the point. The notion that the sexual behaviour of a government leader has nothing to do with his job may be true of a prime minister. But Americans, I suspect, saw Bill Clinton’s transgressions rather as Britons regarded Prince Charles’ phone conversations with Camilla Parker Bowles.

Sure, loads of presidents kept mistresses on the side, and it took a hugely willing suspension of disbelief to buy into the idea of the Kennedys as an ideal family. But JFK was boning movie stars and doing it with such a degree of discretion that we’re still trying to figure out where and how he got it off with Marilyn. In contrast, Bill Clinton humped trailer-park trash – at least, that’s how the Clintonites always described them whenever their boss got caught with his pants down – then went onto Oprah to talk about it. Ah, noblesse oblige.

America, I think, has fallen in love with the Obamas. They are understandably impressed by the man they have chosen to be their leader: charismatic, super-bright, and blessed with remarkably good judgment when it comes to taking advice – after all, his campaign was nearly flawless. But I think they have also been smitten by the grace of his wife and the lovability of his two daughters. They are all a far cry from the patrician remove of the Bushes or the too-obvious ambition of Hillary Clinton.

Americans may not believe in the Mandate of Heaven, but they feel good about their country when their president looks like he could be on ABC Family. “Post-racial” the Obamas may be, but they have the home-spun charm that “Middle America” loves. Good luck to them; they will need it.

Posted by John Rapley in Other | January 18, 2009 2:16PM |