Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.wpost From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Changing the Guard With Ballots, Not Bullets=BY STEVE TWOMEY= Date: Thu, 5 Nov 92 05:01:45 EST Message-ID: <26.1992Nov5.050145@AmeriCast.com> Changing the Guard With Ballots, Not Bullets=BY STEVE TWOMEY= The morning after the United States of America served eviction papers on the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. and approved the lease application of the sax player with shaky references, a line formed on the western fringe of Pershing Park downtown. The line - school kids salted among conventioneers and vacation- ers - was schizoid about the looming change in tenants. Horrible. Wonderful. I'm terrified. I'm thrilled. This is wacko. This is overdue. Mike and Nannette Iatesta, of Denver, both forty-ish, were in- credulous. Bill Clinton isn't pro-life! And he's tax-and-spend! "We have 35 percent of our paychecks going to the government al- ready," Nannette said. But Sue Reyes, 23, of the District, had been dancing in the streets the night before: Finally, we're not going to have a First Lady, we're going to have a First Woman! Good riddance, Bush! But Rocky and Jeanne Flatmo, of Seattle - 62 and 55, respectively - couldn't fathom how it had ended this way. Rocky's a Korean War vet, a George Bush man all the way. And now we have a . . . Draft-dodger! It's unbelievable! "He's very patriotic," Jeanne said of Rocky. But Jewell G. Harris Sr., 52, of Gary, Ind. - not Louisiana - was aglow, a bundle of joy who hasn't felt this good in years, years! Bye, George! "I think today represents hope, unity and a totally new direction for everybody," Harris said. Fear and hope, back and forth, side by side in a line that, at 10 in the morning, started moving out of the park and through big black gates, on its way to take the daily tour of the White House, a building that's always bigger than who we voted for. How did we learn to do it this way? How did we learn to overthrow the leadership of the nation without tanks, without firing squads, without refugees or ethnic cleansing? How did fear and hope learn to stand together in a line after Election Day and not murder each other? Take the tour: There's the painting of Gerald Ford, who gave up power to Jimmy Carter, who surrendered his job to Ronald Reagan. I'm a sucker for moments like this. About 90 percent of the planet changes governments by bullet. We, however, sit at home and watch Rather and Brokaw and Jennings to find out what we've decided, and then we all accept it and go to work the next morn- ing. We don't even take note of how remarkable that is. It took a few moments yesterday for those in line to ponder the point. "If we were another country, they'd be trying to burn the place down," Harris said, meaning the White House and meaning the losers. "I think it says something for this country that you can have this negative campaigning, but when it's over people come together. The people have spoken, and there's no violence." Reyes said that on election night, she was singing, "Ding-dong, Bush is dead!" at the gates of the White House. "And nobody arrested us," she said. What a system, eh? A few years back, I was reporting a story in Europe. The story happened to be about a particular country's intelligence agency and as I stood outside the agency's headquarters taking notes, police arrived and tossed me in a van. They demanded to see my notebook. I, standing on my First Amend- ment rights, refused. They smiled and mentioned something about a jail term. I, realizing I had left my First Amendment rights back in the States, smiled and saw the wisdom of their request. And the country in question was a democracy. Marjorie Mason, 66, and her husband, Perry, 65 - he is the Rock Island, Ill., Perry Mason, not the one on TV - were deeply disap- pointed by the outcome Tuesday, so disappointed that they decided yesterday to take the White House tour while the building "was still Republican," Marjorie said. It's not Republican, of course. It's beyond party and that's how we manage this. Marjorie knows all of that. "There's an incredible sense, regardless of who's in there," Nan- nette Iatesta said of the White House as she came out. "We're Americans first, Republicans second." Or Democrats. Or Perot-ites. Or whatever. I said I was a sucker. Maybe this gushy feeling about the process is intensified by who Clinton is. He's the first president who's roughly my age. As a white male, I've never had much of a sense of identification by sex or race. Now, a growing-heavier, baby-booming, formerly longer-haired man who may know the lyrics to "Purple Haze" is go- ing to be running the nation. This is exciting. This also is, of course, frightening, since most people I know my age couldn't run a raffle. But if he screws up, there won't be a coup. There'll be another portrait on the White House tour of one more guy who got tossed out, civilly. "We respect the majesty of the democratic system," George Bush said Tuesday night as he conceded. "America must always come first. So we will get behind this new president and wish him well." We've been at it for 200 years.<02:20 11-05C9999----- Copyright 1992, The Washington Post. This story is from the Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar- chived or redistributed. For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor- poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)