Two-Stepping Out

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.