By Ann Gerhart
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 21, 2001 ; Page F01
Worth the wait.
Worth the eight years of exile.
Worth the 36 days of tumbling post-election tension.
Worth a few hours more in pinching shoes and cinching cummerbunds to finally see him, the 43rd president of the United States, bounding into ballroom after ballroom. Last night, George W. Bush finally got to have his victory party, a rolling, red-light-flashing cavalcade past some 50,000 screaming, whooping supporters at 10 parties across town.
He picked up on the night's tone right at 8 p.m., on his first stop, when he strode into the Capital Hilton ballroom, grinned at a hollering crowd of 500 Medal of Honor winners and other veterans, and said, "Behave yourselves."
Any distress over Bush's avoidance of active duty in Vietnam had long since faded for this crowd of medal-laden men and women, and they stood on chairs to take his pictures as the new president pledged to make sure "the mission is focused, and it's focused on this: that our soldiers are trained to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place."
And then he and first lady Laura Bush and Vice President Cheney and his wife, Lynne, were gone in a rush, off to the next event, snow falling over them like soft and steady confetti.
Let's get this right out of the way: The man did not lie. The man cannot dance.
Why not? Was Dubya not an Andover cheerleader? Did he not perform athletics with some degree of agility? Does he not hail from the very American social class that has supported Junior Assembly lo these many years?
Whatever Ricky Martin tried to teach him at the Lincoln Memorial the other night, it never took. When the president and first lady took their first twirl at the Ronald Reagan Building, they managed what looked like the Bataan Death March set to music for a grand total of 29 seconds before she took pity and urged inaugural co-chairs Bill and Kathy DeWitt, and Mercer and Gabrielle Reynolds and executive director Jeanne Johnson Phillips to join them. "He's going to get better as the night goes on," Reynolds promised.
At the D.C. Armory he did break his record and danced 56 seconds, to "Waltz Across Texas," his dance tune of the evening.
But while the president was dancing longer, he'd picked up the overall pace and was whipping through the festivities ahead of schedule. Still, with several balls left to go, he was already up past his usual 10 p.m. bedtime.
By the time the president reached the Convention Center, where he hit three separate events, his dancing had become a running joke with the crowds and the press.
He mugged for the cameras, did two twirls and dips with the first lady, and stretched his dance time out to 1 minute 7 seconds.
Leaning over to the press, he said, "I want you to know it's hard to dance on carpet. That's my first excuse. My second excuse is that I'm a lousy dancer."
The inaugural co-chairs by then were traveling with the motorcade as backup dancers. At the biggest ball, the Texas and Wyoming bash at the Convention Center for 12,000 people, Bush praised Cheney, then told the Texas crowd that those who'd attended his two gubernatorial inaugurations in Austin knew he hadn't danced nearly so long on those occasions.
"So tonight in honor of becoming president, my pledge is that I'll spend more than 30 seconds dancing. But not much more than 30 seconds dancing," he said.
The self-deprecation got more florid as the night wore on. "If there's a worse dancer in our family than me, it's the governor of Florida," the president said.
At the National Building Museum ball sponsored by Florida – that fabulous steamy caldron of prized electoral votes – Bush danced briefly with his wife, then waltzed with his daughter Barbara and then with daughter Jenna. But the twirl was almost her undoing. Jenna gasped and grabbed the top of her strapless dress, which started to slip down.
At his final stop at the Marriott Wardman Park, Bush went through his standard roll call of the states, and when he got to Maine, deadpanned: "Spent a little time there breaking bread with the 41st president."
After thanking his supporters, it was time for his last dance. "I'm proud to report we've accumulated more than 10 minutes of dancing," he said. "I've enjoyed every minute of it, but the question is, has the beautiful first lady? So to help you all celebrate, we're going to dance. Then I'm going to bed."
And back to their new house the Bushes went, more than an hour ahead of schedule.
Like former president Clinton and his senatorial wife, the Bushes are boomers, young enough to have a teenaged girl who chose hip spike-heeled boots for her daddy's oath of office.
And yet so much about the evening had the feel of a much older America – the '50s and earlier (despite that inexplicable rendition of "Who Let the Dogs Out" at the Ronald Reagan Building!). The new secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, is the same secretary of defense from some 25 years ago, and that's just how the Congressional Medal of Honor winners at the Capital Hilton liked it. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) wore the same homburg to yesterday's swearing-in as he had to President Eisenhower's.
At the balls, the great swing bands of Tommy Dorsey and Guy Lombardo brought their arrangements out of mothballs. The first couple on the dance floor, twirling to the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, was Tom Jones and Patricia Nix, both of New York. (She grew up in Midland, Tex., and said fervently of its native son: "He's a totally sincere man. I know that. I know that.") Neither she nor her husband wanted to reveal their ages. Him: "We're old enough to remember Tommy Dorsey." Her: "Not me! I don't remember Tommy Dorsey. My mother danced to Tommy Dorsey." He shrugged, took a sip of his drink.
"It Had to Be You" got the Cheneys onto the dance floor a few times and inspired the vice president to remember Dwight Eisenhower.
"We've been married 36 years and I've always said we have a Republican marriage," he said. He explained that his father worked for the Agriculture Department in Nebraska in the early 1950s when Eisenhower reorganized the department, sending his father to a post in Casper, Wyo., where the Cheneys met when Lynne was 13 years old. "If not for the Republican victory in 1952, I said she would have married someone else. And she said, 'Right, and he'd be vice president.'‚"
Every ball has its belles, its characters and its passing celebrities.
The much-anticipated Katherine Harris, maligned throughout November as the sugar cane heiress snagging Vice President Gore's hopes, sailed into the Florida ball shortly after Gov. Jeb Bush arrived and made her way to the roped-off press pen. She wore a simple black satin gown, dashing the hopes of those who wanted a gander at the $9,000 James Purcell delicacy she was said to have purchased. "I never even saw that dress," said the Florida secretary of state with a laugh.
She said her notoriety had grown so vast that on a recent getaway to exotic Marrakech, she found herself stopped by strangers who pointed and screamed "Larry King" and "CNN" when she was walking the streets. "I needed a veil," she said.
By the end of the evening, keen-eyed reporters had lost count of men in tuxedos and cowboy boots. But at the Marriott Wardman, Larry and Karla Boggs, from Red Oak, Okla., were noticed. The owner of a 700-acre ranch wore a "black 8X beaver cowboy hat." He had black leather boots on, a black tuxedo, black vest. She had a black gown decorated with black dragonflies. Asked if he were a Republican or Democrat, he said, "Unless you want to get hung at sunrise, you're a Democrat where I come from. But we're not." In fact, he's the Latimer County Republican chairman. He said, "Our voters are so smart in Oklahoma, that even after you die you can vote. I'm not joking."
He also said: "We like Mr. Clinton a lot better this evening than we did this morning."
At the Texas Ball, the room was full of men in black and white, accompanied by women in every color of the rainbow – violet and pink and powder blue sequins and every conceivable shade of red. It looked like a bunch of penguins being taken for a stroll by a bevy of peacocks. If you were from another planet, you would think the human species was divided into two sexes, one black and white, and the other in living color. And only the females were allowed to display their chests or shoulders (by the way, there were a lot more shoulders on display than cleavage).
In one crowded booze line, there was a guy in a low slung black cowboy hat with a white mustache and a twinkle in his eye. He said he's the guy who sold George W. Bush his ranch. His name? "I don't know, I'm not getting into that."
And just why are some people in black hats and others in white ones?
"Some women like black hats, some women like white hats."
What are the women like who like men in black hats? "Good dates," he said. When he got to the front of the line he picked up the basket full of tips and said, "I like a bar where they give you money along with the drinks."
At Union Station, Drayton Prator showed off another kind of native costume. A 42-year-old Texan who says he lives down the street from former president Bush, Prator was wearing a tuxedo with Texas flag vest, bow tie, NRA cuff links and black Stetson. A gaggle of photographers surrounded him, taking pictures – he's not a celebrity but he's a Texas character and that's close enough. He says his wife picked Union Station because they thought it would be the best locale. Did he realize what a center of attention he would be tonight?
"I've been here about five minutes and I've just found that out," he said.
And at the Washington Hilton, a fiftyish blonde picked her way carefully about the room, on her head a model of the Washington Monument.
The woman wouldn't give her name, protesting that "I'm from Washington, D.C., and don't count."
"I've been to too many of these things and you have to make your own fun," she offered. Nor would she divulge construction techniques in creating her obelisk, which boasted a burst of gold spangles reminiscent of fireworks.
Unlike the Hollywood-loving Democratic Party, the GOP often goes begging for high-voltage celebrities. They really like ones who play military figures. So there was Chuck Norris at the Ohio Ball. He's Walker, Texas Ranger. And there was Catherine Bell, star of CBS's "JAG," who appeared in a dress that revealed a whole shelf of cleavage and chatted with Gen. Hugh Shelton at the American Legion's "Salute to Heroes." A woman of Republican views, Bell hinted that "JAG" might find a way to write in some segments for the new president.
There was Marie Osmond, with swimmer Dara Torres towering over her.
Torres had poured her impressive Olympian body into a size 4 gold lame» dress and arranged her butterflier's feet into shoes so high that she walked only with mincing steps.
"I think Bush is just going to be an awesome president," said Torres. "He has this down-to-earth nature about him." And Meat Loaf, the guy who saw paradise by the dashboard light, who knew how truly strait-laced he was? "I'm very conservative," he said. "People don't have that image of me, but I am."
Despite the careful rhetoric the Republicans have voiced throughout the inaugural events about bringing together America, the evening's diversity seemed to resound with the lack thereof.
At the ball that included Maryland, Virginia and the District, at the D.C. Armory, Valerie Charles was swaying to Aretha Franklin's "Chain of Fools" on the edge of the dance floor where she stood with her friend Thedra Lewis of Greenbelt. The African American women, who work at the American Gas Association, said that they were independent voters and excited to participate in inaugural festivities. "When we first walked in, we didn't see anyone who looked like us and I said, 'Oh my god,' " Lewis said. "At least now we are starting to see a few more."
The Unity Ball in the swank Four Seasons Hotel was the stronghold of African American support for Bush. Attorney Ed Hayes, who chaired the event, and his wife, Alice, a Democrat, were easy to spot in their white silk cowboy hats. The hats were a present from banker Joe Allbritton, said Hayes, who added that Allbritton was "ready to celebrate the Texans being back."
John Wilks, Hayes's co-chair, was disappointed that the president did not appear last night. "This ball ties into what appears to be the president's intention to bring the party back to the center and to make it more inclusive," he said. " Coming to the ball would've been a strong statement on his part."
But at the D.C. Ball at the Armory, Bush did extend, at least limply, an olive branch when he said was "thrilled" that Mayor Anthony A. Williams was hosting. The mayor decided to interpret that as a reflection on the good job Washington did playing host all day.
"My wife and I are trying to set a tone of comity and cooperation," said Williams. "The fact that the city did the job we needed to do is moving our city along towards revitalization."
Then he added that the music was better than he thought, "especially since you would expect the Republicans to be playing 'The Blue Danube.'‚"
Indeed, the most striking diversity of all occurred in the train station. Outside of the security zone at Union Station, Tim Yang, a 21-year-old college student in town for the Capitol March for Life, noted, "You've got tuxedos and you've got thugs." And in the women's restrooms, the dichotomy between ballgoers and normal people was striking. One belle applied foundation to her cleavage, while a non-ballgoer in leather pants and jacket helped tie the lavender gown sash on a stranger.
While the Bushes' haste and motorcade efficiency had them home by midnight, hassles for the masses broke out throughout the city.
At the Marriott, fire marshals shut the doors at 9 p.m., leaving more than 500 out in the cold. "Nobody should leave if they hope to get back in. The problem is they oversold the ballroom. We closed the door at 3,124 people," said an official who would not give his name.
The fire marshals stopped people from entering the Ohio Ball at the Convention Center at about 9:30, delaying hundreds who hoped to enter and causing Texas student Lucy Clarke to moan, "My feet are killing me."
And at the Reagan Building, the Rev. Leon Emerson fussed over getting his three handicapped companions into the ballroom. He said the elevators wouldn't come down to the ballroom level, so they kept riding up and down the elevator until the elevator operator finally admitted he didn't know what he was doing. "I'm a retired fire marshal in Denver," said Emerson. "They should shut this place down!"
The Omni Shoreham repeated its coat check debacle of four years ago, once again leaving hundreds of bare-backed women separated from their warm winter coats.
And then there were the losers, bravely soldiering on toward a more radical tomorrow.
Over at Clarendon's Galaxy Hut, a bar the size of a coat room at the Marriott, about a 100 people attended a band showcase put on by Snap Pop!, a local music magazine. It was billed as the "Loser's Inaugural Ball." "I'm looking forward to the tax cut so I can invest in a drug cartel and supply the first family," said Mark Trite, 29, of the folk group Trite Ego.
In the Mayflower Hotel's ornate and corniced ballroom, the District's own Oxymorons played "Lawyers, Guns and Money" as left-out-in-the-rain liberals munched on melon slices and California rolls at the Americans for Democratic Action counter-inaugural ball.
The 54-year-old ADA – founded by Eleanor Roosevelt and others – sponsored its first ball in 1977 when Jimmy Carter was inaugurated. In 1985, it shifted to an anti-soiree when Ronald Reagan was sworn in for the second time.
"This is a place for liberals to come and party and have fun and say, 'This is the beginning of fighting back,' " said ADA National Director Amy Isaacs. About 800 people made reservations. Larry Baldwin, 76, a retired Navy pilot from Centreville, said: "Hell, the president is a loser. We've got to celebrate the fact that the Democratic force is a majority force."
At a nearby table, ballgoers bought "SMUSH BUSH" pins and paid $2 apiece to lift a pretzel jug full of confetti and guess the answer to: "How Many Chads (in ounces) Does It Take To Steal An Election?" A hot seller was this T-shirt: "A Thousand Points of Light, and We Got the Dim One."
During a lull in the music, a somber Paul Strauss, "shadow senator" from D.C., was asked why he was at the ball. "You mark occasions," he said. "I go to funerals, too."
