Chris Smith’s blog

Four years ago this morning, I was checking out of a motel in Carson City, Nevada, road-worn and weary, on the way to visit a friend in Mammoth Lakes, trying to escape the gloom that had descended on San Francisco after John Kerry’s loss. There was no getting away from it, though: in the motel office, George W. Bush’s second inauguration was playing on the TV, the sound turned low. Under bleak skies, his motorcade sped through the D.C. streets, besieged by booing protesters. As I signed the credit-card slip, the guy behind the counter burst out, “I can’t believe that bastard won again.”

How things change.

There were the million-plus in D.C. this morning, of course, clogging the Mall and massing out toward the horizon. The crowd was smaller here in San Francisco, but it still filled the Civic Center plaza, where a big screen had been set up in front of City Hall’s beaux-arts facade. We would have had a better view back home on the couch, but that wasn’t the point. At times like this, you just want to be around people. The mood was jubilant; people cheered the Bidens and Obamas, booed Rick Warren and Bush (number of shoes thrown at Bush’s image on the screen: 4) and generally welcomed the dawn of a new era. Gathered today under the bright blue sky were whites and blacks, Latinos and Asians, old hippies in sensible shoes and young hipsters in giant sunglasses, all of them craning their necks toward the screen, oscillating between hushed silence and delirious applause. After Obama’s speech, we all sang the Star Spangled Banner, teary-eyed, voices cracking. Afterwards, people lingered in the sun, a little stunned, maybe, over what had actually happened today.