Well, one million at the Mall is nothing to be *ashamed* of.

That’s quite a lot, really.  Maybe not quite record-breaking, but still quite a lot:

A record crowd for inauguration? Hard to say

Reporting from Washington — More than 1 million spectators convened on the National Mall to watch Barack Obama take the oath of office Tuesday, but it was unclear if the crowd surpassed the record thought to have been set at Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1965 inauguration.

Though early estimates ranged as high as 2 million people, satellite images of Obama’s swearing-in suggested the crowd was probably about half that, said Clark McPhail, who has been analyzing crowds on the National Mall since the 1960s.

Not the three million or so that the consensus had come up with, but… passable. Very passable. Besides, tons of people watched it on television or online, no doubt.

After all, you wouldn’t actually have to do anything to see it that way.

Moe Lane

PS: How did Bush do? Bless your heart, if I didn’t care then, why should I care now? I’m sure that he had less than Obama did, if that’s what’s worrying you.