DEL.ICIO.USFROM ATLANTA TO ... WASHINGTON, D.C.
Congressional staffer sweats details of inauguration
McClatchy Newspapers
Friday, January 16, 2009
Jennifer Griffith is planning a formal event next week for 240,000 people, and a month out, her to-do list was four pages long.
At night, she tosses and turns, worrying about security.
Chuck Kennedy/MCT
Jennifer Griffith, a Congressional staffer who’s planning the Inauguration, says she will skip the balls on Tuesday night and go home to sleep instead.
Griffith is in the thick of the planning for President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony.
As the No. 2 staffer at the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, Griffith has been working 12-hour days helping to select the menu for the inaugural luncheon for a political who’s who; designing the inauguration tickets; figuring out how to get Supreme Court justices, Cabinet members, lawmakers, diplomats and hundreds of others on and off the platform; and arranging the departure ceremony for President George W. Bush.
“We are responsible for the lawful, peaceful transfer of power,” she said.
An estimated 2 million people are expected to descend on Washington for Obama’s inauguration Jan. 20. Most of them will be on the National Mall, where they’ll watch the ceremony on huge video screens, or on the parade route down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol to the White House.
Griffith, however, will be concerned about the lucky 240,000 who’ll be on the Capitol grounds for the swearing-in ceremony. Well more than 1 million people have sought tickets for the event from congressional offices. Some offices received 25,000 requests for the few hundred tickets they were allocated.
“It is a historic, momentous event,” she said. “Everyone feels this is something no one expected.”
The night before the inauguration, Griffith will sleep in her office. Another staffer suggested that they wear sweat shirts that say “56th Presidential Inauguration Slumber Party.” There have been 56 presidential inaugurations, not including swearing-ins after a president died in office or resigned.
On Inauguration Day, Griffith will fret about hundreds of details, and then help escort Vice President-elect Joe Biden to the platform. Rather than attending an inaugural ball that night, she said, she’s going home to sleep.
“The day after the election, our seven phone lines lit up, and it hasn’t stopped since,” she said.
The logistics alone can be overwhelming. Roughly 1,600 dignitaries and friends of Obama and Biden will be on the inaugural platform; getting them on and off in a timely matter will be a challenge. There are only three entrances to the platform, and Griffith said that she and her staff already had had three “mini-rehearsals.”
Griffith also has monitored the construction of the platform and other details such as the scaffolding that will hold the giant American flags that will provide the backdrop.
She said she was a detail person.
“I am organized,” she said.
One thing Griffith can’t control, however, is the weather. Washington can be cold and sometimes snowy in late January. President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration was moved inside because of the weather.
“Sunny, 48 degrees, with no wind would be perfect,” Griffith said.
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