Broadcasting:

The answer to the Big Political Question is....no. Nope. Nah. Uh-uh.
As in, No I did not drag my helpless infant through crushing throngs of strangers in sub-freezing temperatures for 15 hours to watch on an outside TV screen what we quite happily watched on our inside one instead.
Aaawww. :( I'm not saying I don't feel a little bit lame for living a matter of minutes from the Big Event and not going. Rather, it is a sign of how much I love my Little One that I wasn't there.
J and I have attended events on the Mall that involved mobs of people. While it's kind of exciting, it's also a bit scary. Last July 4th, all squished up against the glass of a sardine-packed metro train, I actually said to J (who couldn't hear me because he'd been sucked into the stranger-vortex two stations ago), "I would never never take a little child out in this madness!"
So I didn't. And those huddled masses we've encountered are nothing compared to the massive huddle that formed on Tuesday.
I will say that the electricity of what was happening downtown radiated its way all the way out to us in the suburbs, and that is not a lie. And so did the craziness. When J left for work at 5am, the line for his train was all the way down into the tunnel, and then back out again on the other side. Which is just. Nuts.
Plus, your happy-face local news station may have omitted to mention that our metro line was shut down most of the day because someone ended up under one of the trains. Ouch.
So I'm a lot less sorry to have missed it than I'd like to admit. But since it was a special occasion, Little One, who is really not allowed to watch TV yet, was permitted to view the event on the big magical moving-picture box. She was entranced. Girl might go into politics. Mmm hmm.
President Little One. Nice ring.