The Presidential, Please
A Ticket, a Hotel Room and an 'I Was There' Moment

By Michael E. Ruane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 26, 2008

Want to attend the big inauguration?

No matter who wins the presidential election, it will be historic and stirring, so get ready to speed-dial your favorite Washington hotel, or maybe the old college roommates.

Call your member of Congress, who, eventually, will have the tickets to distribute. Those tickets will be free.

Coming to town for the Jan. 20 inauguration of the next president could cost some people a mint.

Those interested in the Royal Suite at the Four Seasons Hotel will pay $15,000 a night, with a five-night minimum.

If they spring for the Ritz-Carlton Washington, it's $50,000 for the four-night package.

Also available at the Marriott on Pennsylvania Avenue is a $1 million extravaganza -- you get 300 rooms!

Sure, the event is three months away, and many details are "outcome dependent," as the military's inauguration planners say. But the buzz is on, tickets have been printed and workers are already nailing together the giant inaugural platform at the Capitol.

For some things, it's actually late in the game.

The 80-year-old Hay-Adams Hotel, for example, with its primo pedigree and location across Lafayette Square from the White House, already has sold out its inauguration packages. "Because of our location, we tend to get booked pretty quickly," a spokeswoman said, declining to go into detail "because of the clientele."

The Creative Coalition, an arts advocacy group, has lined up movie types including Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon and Barry Levinson for its ball, no matter who wins. Location to be determined, but the price is set. For $100,000 you get 50 tickets, for $50,000 you get 16.

And in the Ritz-Carlton's lounges you can order an Obama Pama -- pomegranate liqueur, vodka and triple sec -- or Palin's Pit Bull, with rum, cranberry juice and Red Bull. (The chefs wanted to do something with moose meat, in honor of Gov. Sarah Palin's Alaska connection, but apparently it's illegal to sell the meat of a moose, spokeswoman Colleen M. Evans said. A type of elk burger will have to do.)

Many snazzy downtown hotels say they've had plenty of inquiries and expect an explosion of bookings the moment the election is decided.

"It'll be wild the day after," Evans said. "It's going to be a really big deal. It's really going to be history. We have no doubt we're going to sell out. You'll even see a lot of sellout situations in the suburbs."

The Rockville Hilton, except for a handful of its 315 rooms, is indeed booked for the inauguration. "It's all over but the shouting," area managing director Michael D. Hirsch said.

People booking now want to attend no matter who wins, hotel officials said, but one spokeswoman said that some guests might be banking on the latest polls showing Sen. Barack Obama ahead of Sen. John McCain.

At the Sheraton Hotel in Reston, the general manager reported brisk inauguration business but said the hotel is not full. "It's been a tough year in the hotel industry," he said, declining to give his name. "We're anticipating the demand to be strong."

The Internet, meanwhile, is humming with messages from people offering and seeking inexpensive private lodging for the event. For local apoliticos, a Taos, N.M., couple last week was offering a house swap on the Craigslist Web site: "If you want to escape the madness for a week, here's your chance."

Meanwhile, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, which plans the swearing-in at the Capitol, had most of the 240,000 tickets printed and counted "in a very secure setting" over the summer, said staff director Howard S. Gantman. "The last inaugural, more than 200,000 people were there," he said. "With the interest in this election, there could be significantly more."

"The tickets are distributed through the Senate offices and the House offices" and through the Presidential Inaugural Committee, set up by the winning candidate, he said. "Constituents around the country are urged to contact their House or Senate members. . . . Usually they all have a systematic way of distributing those tickets."

The free, color-coded tickets are not made available until the last minute, to try to keep them from being sold, he said. Most people won't be able to get their tickets until the week before the inauguration, when "each (legislator's) office will have to come to us, to a secure location, to pick up the tickets that have been provided for that office," he said.

The color codes will direct ticket-holders to the various seating areas.

It is not yet known how many tickets each member of Congress will get -- usually it's several hundred -- but people assigned tickets will have to go to their legislator's office on Capitol Hill to pick them up.

The viewing area extends from the Capitol along the Mall. There will be non-ticketed viewing, Gantman said, but it probably will be far back on the Mall. He said talks are ongoing with the National Park Service regarding how much of the Mall might be needed and if things like JumboTrons might be used.

Planning has been underway for months. The committee has ordered more than 10,000 square feet of blue carpet, trimmed in red, for the platform, 28,000 chairs, as well as blankets and ponchos in case of bad weather. Umbrellas are prohibited in the audience, in part for security reasons.

The committee is also picking an inaugural theme, which often gets lost in the hoopla. The theme for the last inaugural was "A Vision of America," a salute to the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark's exploration of the West, and the centennial of wilderness-loving Theodore Roosevelt's inauguration.

For the swearing-in, timing is crucial, Gantman said.

The Constitution requires the new president to be sworn in by noon and does not provide for delay. "If it doesn't happen by noon, you're basically in a situation where the Constitution does not grant the outgoing president the authority to remain president," he said. So it must happen on time.

"It'll be done," he said. "Pure and simple, it'll be done."

After the swearing-in, a parade along Pennsylvania Avenue will feature 12,000 people, 20 floats, 40 horses and a slew of marching bands.

States, corporations, societies and various other organizations are expected to host a dozen or more official and unofficial events -- luncheons, concerts, soirees and balls -- for tens of thousands of inauguration revelers.

Much of the parade and celebratory planning will be up to the incoming presidential committee, but the military plays a major role.

The Pentagon's Armed Forces Inaugural Committee has been working for more than a year to plan for the thousands of servicemen and women who will serve as aides, honor guards and musicians. Members of the military -- 1,580 to be exact -- will line most of the parade route, each person standing 10 feet apart.

Last Thursday, key military planners conducted an inauguration map exercise, in which officers studied moves on a gigantic floor map of the downtown area, as if plotting an invasion. Thomas Groppel, the committee's director of ceremonies who has been involved in every inauguration since 1973, directed the exercise with a long pointer.

The event is a powerful lesson in civics, Groppel, 65, said beforehand. "This is the way you peacefully change governments," he said. "This is not a coup. . . . This is the way it's supposed to be done. This is the way civilized people conduct themselves."