There Was Much to Love About the Inauguration

It was swell. No, really, it was. I wouldn’t have changed a thing.

I loved seeing the multitudes of Republicans back in tall cotton, hugging and thumbs-upping like a gold-medal track team.

I loved the Great Seal of the State of California behind the dais looking as gaudily Technicolor as if it had just had a lunchtime make-over at the Lancome counter.

I loved seeing the hoi polloi -- the great California populace who voted Arnold Schwarzenegger into office but who weren’t allowed in for the inauguration -- pressing by the hundreds against the cyclone fence like spuds against a potato masher, all just for an eyeful or earful of the new governor.

I loved the fact that Bill Lockyer -- the Democratic attorney general who voted for Schwarzenegger but scolded him for unanswered questions about groping incidents, a “stain” on his administration -- was the only official to wave to the crowd of Republicans as his turn came to be introduced.

I loved the ordure the Capitol’s mounted police’s mounts left behind, lending a whiff of the circus to the circus.

I loved the Sacramento Choral Society and Orchestra singing just about every number from “The Sound of Music” soundtrack, except that one with the line, “How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?”

I loved the fact that the transition-team guy who will be the governor’s press mouthpiece for matters financial strode into the press office right after the swearing-in and barked, “Under new management” -- even as the administration’s press team was struggling to figure out how to get the copying machine to work.

I loved it when the fellow from the Schwarzenegger inaugural team solemnly imparted to reporters the news that Maria Shriver would be wearing “a gray Valentino suit with a cream shell,” and that the governor-elect would be wearing “a gray Prada suit” -- and I especially loved that we all dutifully wrote it down.

I loved the fact that the retired anchorman who presided at the podium pronounced the new governor’s name “Swortzen-egger.”

I loved hearing Maria Shriver reading the words of Maya Angelou, the poet who read her own work at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inaugural; I loved the fact that the long passages often sounded like soaring birds, and once in a while like something from a 12-step program -- and that the crowd applauded it all.

I loved seeing that the front line in the press risers was reserved for the cameras from “Entertainment Tonight” and “Access Hollywood” and “Inside Edition,” and that the proceedings were broadcast live in at least two hemispheres, which hasn’t happened since the O.J. trial.

I loved it that the BBC was there, and gossipista Matt Drudge.

I loved seeing that Kennedy Democrat, Sargent Shriver, father of the new first lady of California, thumping and waving his aluminum cane to the brassy downbeats of “California, Here I Come.”

If the Democrat who ran for vice president with George McGovern 31 years ago could have such a good time at a Republican inaugural, who couldn’t? Well, OK, Gray Davis, but who else?

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There wasn’t much of a military presence here beyond the 59th Army National Guard band -- called “The Governor’s Own,” who knew? -- but the Missing Man formation was there.

The missing man was Gray Davis. He was there, but he wasn’t there, if you know what I mean. Someone must have slipped Prozac into his cappuccino, because from the time he stepped out from the columns of the west front of the Capitol as the sitting governor, until he vanished back inside less than an hour later as the former governor, the rictus of a half-smile never left his face.

The man who, as a boy of 11, had given his parents an anniversary card signed, “Governor Joseph Graham Davis,” was transformed in the eyes of the world from governor to ex-, sent home by voters who had never failed him before, back to his 1,000-square-foot condo in West Hollywood.

Davis and his wife, Sharon, sat among the governors of administrations past. Davis applauded almost mechanically, along with the crowd, even when Schwarzenegger announced the repeal of the hated car tax, which had been hung around Davis’ neck like a bell on a medieval leper.

There’s a quote from Andrew Marvell -- he wrote it about Oliver Cromwell, but it suited Davis on Monday. “He nothing common did or mean/upon that memorable scene.” Since he lost the election, Davis has managed to be both cool and warm, as circumstance demanded. Go figure.

As Davis walked back into the Capitol, where he has spent much of his adult life, the band was playing, “California, Here I Come.” What I heard was “California, There I Go.”

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After a campaign that seemed to be cobbled together from film clips, a kind of “Great Moments with Mr. Schwarzenegger,” there was some worry about how this inauguration would go down with The Folks. Too much Danny DeVito and not enough Dan Lungren would not do. (DeVito was here, and so was Lungren, wearing a crew-neck sweater among the suits. Either it’s a new image in his new campaign for Congress, or the airline lost his luggage.)

Monday was the last day of Candidate Schwarzenegger and the first of Gov. Schwarzenegger. The screenwriter’s vocabulary of the campaign -- “terminate” this or that -- was abandoned for the California incantations -- a new day, the golden dream by the sea.

He borrowed one phrase from JFK, the uncle-in-law he never met: “I am an idealist without illusions.” He did not use a California variant on JFK’s better-known line, and declare, “Ask not what your state can do for you, but what you can do for your state.”

Schwarzenegger campaigned on the notion that Californians have done enough for their state, and it’s time for California to return the favor. It was, as he promised it would be, his first act as governor, after he lifted his Prada-clad arm from that 1911 Bible: executive order No. 1, repealing the car tax hike.

So the checks are in the mail, and some pretty big bucks they are, too. What we can’t know is, once the budget realities set in, whether Schwarzenegger will find himself asking for it back, a few cents at a time.

Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Tuesdays.