'I Will Work to Build A Single Nation': Restoration: With a solemn speech, George W. Bush ends the Age of Clinton. He's striking the right notes, but still faces a divided nation.(Inaugural 2001)

Publication: Newsweek

Publication Date: 29-JAN-01

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As George W. Bush gazed down the Mall at the thousands of Americans who had come to see him inaugurated, he tried not to look at his father. He knew that the elder Bush was bound to "become emotional," as the younger Bush had put it a few days before, and he didn't want his father's emotions to become "contagious." Only after he had been sworn in did the nation's 43d president briefly turn and embrace the 41st president. The cameras caught George W's face contorting to suppress tears, while his eyes glistened. His father flicked at his eye with a gloved finger and clenched his jaw in a tight grimace through his son's moving speech.

Bushes, by their own testimony, cry easily. But this was a day, and a speech, for dignity, decorum, gravity, self-control. Sentiment must have surged and raged in the hearts of both Bushes--the father to see the son assume his mantle after a depressing defeat in 1992 and eight years of Clintonism, the...

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