If people want to donate to inauguration, so what?
Since the cost of the just-completed presidential inauguration has been causing such angst to various staff members of the newspaper, I thought I would speak up on behalf of the $40 million pricetag.
My main argument in favor of a $40 million inaugural is, “So what?” If people want to donate their own money to any cause it is no one’s business but the one doing the donating. They made it, it’s theirs, and they can spend it any way they so choose.
Ingrid Canterbury seems to think the funds spent on the inauguration could have been better spent on aid to the tsunami victims. The last time I checked the figures, private charitable donations from Americans of all walks of life to tsunami relief funds totaled somewhere close to $250 million, more than five times what was spent on the inaugural. Is it to much to ask these carping critics to credit this country with doing anything good?
The cheap shot Canterbury took at the Bush twins was unnecessary and classless, but not unexpected.
Earlier in the week an editorial appeared on this same topic in which Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt were held up as the examples of how to hold an inaugural in war time. Aside from the fact only democratic presidents would be singled out for praise on the pages of our newspaper, (by no means a surprise), I can only say that Woodrow Wilson ran for reelection on a slogan of “He Kept Us Out Of War” in 1916, which he did until he was safely reelected.
As for FDR, he didn’t hold a scaled-back inaugural because of World War II. He did that because he was at the brink of death by 1945. What it all boils down to is a bunch of liberals with a bad case of sour grapes. You can be sure if the other fellow had won, the same $40 million would have been spent with nary a word of complaint from Ingrid Canterbury or others.
Very sincerely yours,
Paul W. Farley
204 S. High Street
McMinnville