Members embrace the day’s pageantry

Lawmakers,
Supreme Court justices, former presidents, spouses and celebrities set
aside their rhetorical arrows Monday and reveled in the quadrennial
spectacle that is the presidential inauguration.

In and
around the Capitol, the nation’s political elite were by turns
hobnobbing with one another and — like any out-of-town tourist —
snapping cellphone photos of the historic moment.

“This is
history,” a onetime and perhaps future presidential wannabe, Rep.
Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), said to her colleagues as she took an iPhone
photo of members of Congress waiting to proceed out of the Capitol to
their seats.

{mosads}Atop the platform on the west front of the
Capitol, members of Congress craned to get a view both of President
Obama taking the oath for a second term and of Beyoncé belting out “The
Star-Spangled Banner.” One of the president’s top critics, House
Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), even tweeted out a photo of the
president delivering his address.

(Cantor, or his staff, had more
success than another Twitter aficionado, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa),
who sent out a series of real-time tweets more than three hours after
Obama finished speaking.)

As they waited to file out to their seats, Cabinet secretaries mingled with members of the Supreme Court.

Sen.
John Kerry (D-Mass.), the nominee to take over Hillary Clinton’s job as
secretary of State, arrived with the Cabinet officials, walking closely
behind Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

The Supreme Court
justices, bundled in winter overcoats, filed through the doors closely
behind the Cabinet officials, with a laughing and joking Clarence
Thomas, who is known for his mostly quiet demeanor during the court’s
oral arguments.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano had a
more pressing concern. “Is there a bathroom near?” Napolitano asked, to
no one in particular, as she entered the Capitol.

At the traditional inaugural lunch in Statuary Hall, the odd-couple pairings were too many to count.

Former
President Bill Clinton surveyed the room and kibitzed with his
designated seatmate, House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), the
third-ranking Republican.

Earlier, both Bill and Hillary Clinton
chatted up two conservative stalwarts: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the House budget chief, who would have taken
the oath as vice president on Monday if the November election had turned
out differently.

Given a prime upfront table, the Clintons were
seated with Chief Justice John Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid (D-Nev.) and across the table from Jack Lew, Obama’s chief of staff
and nominee for Treasury secretary.

“Today is a great day for talking to people,” said Lew, who needs to win support for his confirmation in the Senate.

Across
the aisle, former President Jimmy Carter sat at the same table as
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who had removed a
widely-remarked-on hat that he wore outside, which appeared to have been
taken straight out of a Shakespeare play.

The political star
wattage was such that it took Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan several
minutes to find someone to talk to as she waited to sit down for a lunch
of bison and lobster. 

Many celebrities, governors and members of Congress didn’t score an invite to the exclusive gathering. 

Singer
John Legend and a guest wandered into the lunch even though they didn’t
have seats. They chatted with guests and took pictures, and they even
appeared to wait to be introduced to Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry,
who was clad in a ketchup-red pantsuit befitting her fortune.

Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) found herself seated at the same table as her
onetime inquisitor, Rep. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.), the former chairman of the
House Ethics Committee, which investigated Waters. “I just said,
‘Remember me?’ ” Waters told reporters after the lunch.

If there
was a star of the show other than Obama, it was the master of
ceremonies, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), who seemed to relish his
every moment at the microphone and took every opportunity to trumpet the
inaugural contributions from his home state of New York.

Perhaps
the day’s most amusing unscripted moment came when Vice President Biden
was offering a toast to “a man who never, never, never operates out of
fear, only operates out of confidence.” Thinking the honoree was Obama,
Schumer raised his glass before Biden stopped him. “I’m toasting you,
Chuck,” he said, as the room erupted in laughter.

“The best parts
of these events are unscripted,” Schumer said when he stepped back to
the podium, drawing more laughter from the crowd.

Rank-and-file lawmakers at the lunch were relegated to what Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) quipped was the “kids’ table.”

“The
lunch is a rare moment of unity, and everybody was on good behavior and
spoke about the promise of working together for the next four years,”
Portman said. “It’s a refreshing change from the normal Washington
meetings.”

The theme of unity was a common one on Monday, even as
leaders acknowledged that the bipartisan bonhomie would likely be
short-lived.

“It’s always a new beginning every time we’re in this
room,” Biden told the assembled luminaries at the lunch. “And there’s a
sense of possibilities and a sense of opportunity and a sense —
sometimes it’s fleeting — but a sense that maybe we can really begin to
work together.”

Exactly how fleeting should be known soon: the
House and Senate return to work on Tuesday, when Obama’s second term
will begin in earnest.

— Molly K. Hooper, Erik Wasson, Jordy Yager, Jeremy Herb and Alexandra Jaffe contributed to this report.