“Who is Ben Marble?” was the first question of Paul Slansky’s October 31, 2005, Bush quiz. The correct answer was D: “The Gulfport, Mississippi, onlooker who twice interrupted Dick Cheney’s conversation with reporters to tell Cheney, ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

Surely Marble’s fifteen minutes were up? Not so. Surveying D.C.’s Lafayette Park this wintry afternoon for demonstrators, I spotted Marble, dressed as Mr. Famous himself: Jesus. He was holding a sign that read, “Shoe Them The Door” and a cardboard cutout of Bush, with Dick Cheney’s head taped to, well, the groin area. Passersby were encouraged to hurl their footwear at the President’s likeness.

Marble was wearing sandals, of course, though he did have the foresight to layer heavy white socks underneath. The chilly breeze was slowly dislodging his moustache. Pinned to his robe was a button with the slogan “Bush+Dick=Screwed.”

Marble donned the costume and drove all the way from Mississippi to protest the President and Vice President’s claims of piety. “Pretend Christians,” Marble called them, his reddish brown beard sliding off his chin. “I have one philosophy: Jesus did not write a single book, ever.” In spite of all this, Marble does not consider himself a Christian, although he was raised attending a fundamentalist church where congregants, he said, “act like a bunch of retards, have seizures.”

Cardboard Bush looked like he had taken a bit of a beating that day. Had Marble been beaned by a Reebok or two? Sure, but that comes with the territory. After all, “I’m paying the price for their sins.”

A giant white tent in the parking lot of the Old Convention Center, in downtown Washington D.C., is home to InauguralFest, a “non-partisan tribute to presidential history,” according to a flyer. You can tour a model of Air Force One, view former First Ladies’ gowns, visit the Presidential Pet Museum, and walk through a replica of the Oval Office, where visitors are encouraged to “sit behind the historical Resolute desk and sign a bill into law.”

We asked several future Presidents what laws they would sign.

• Bailey, 11: Every Tuesday is National Ice Cream Day.


• Daire, 13: Every school day goes from nine to twelve.
  
  Daire’s mom: How about ending the war in Iraq or something?
  
  Daire: And no wars. But mainly the first one.


• Malcolm, 11: Anyone making under $250,000 gets a 10 per cent tax break.


• Miles, 8: Use guns for only good reasons, like hunting.


• Taylor, 9: One day a week, everybody has to eat cake for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And it has to be vanilla cake.
  
  Darian, 5: Do whatever you want to.


• Julia, 7: No copying the White House.

Mr. President-elect, before we get to the big doings tomorrow, I’d like to propose a last-minute appointment. Please call up Chesley B. Sullenberger III and tell him that you’ve just nominated him as Secretary of Fabulous Outcomes—or perhaps Commissar of Cool, I don’t care. Sully Sullenberger was the pilot of last Thursday’s US Airways Flight 1549 from LaGuardia, the Airbus A320 that was headed for Charlotte, N.C., but ended up in the Hudson River instead. This will not be an honorary post. Captain Sullenberger, in a short space of time, restored a large area of good feeling about ourselves and about this country that we’d missed badly but almost without knowing it. This doesn’t have much to do with his decision to opt for a Hudson River landing—a choice that the networks were calling brilliant or magical all day Thursday and again on Friday. Come on, guys: do you mean that, wow, he didn’t put her down on the Moshulu Parkway or the Palisades Interstate or on the western stretches of Canal Street? Yes, the Hudson and, yeah, don’t forget how he avoiding smacking into the George Washington Bridge: another magical coup, I kept hearing.

All Secretary-elect Sullenberger did was to do everything right: wipe off speed but don’t stall; sound dadly and sensible on the intercom; get the tail down just a fraction; fly level; avoid river traffic; put her down opposite the ferries and sightseeing craft around 50th Street, to be near rescue; pray. He was prepared and then some, having spent hundreds of hours, for instance, flying gliders in his spare time. His wife reports that he "loves the art of the airplane." Now he was flying a eighty-ton glider with one hundred and fifty-two others aboard. Splaaaaasshhhhhhh—ooohhh—wowwweee!

The splash-down and the swift rescue of all hands has occasioned a family glow in us all. Flying had stopped being fun, stopped being American. Sully, in a couple of minutes, dimmed visions of 9/11 and, for the moment, done away with security checks, mission strikes, air-ticket prices, lost baggage, late arrivals, high fuel costs, airlines in receivership, and the stalled J.F.K. traffic on the Van Wyck Expressway. Without saying anything much he has brought back Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, Jimmy Stewart, Sam Shepard, Gary Cooper, and the Man Upstairs, who were all sorta quiet, too. Shouldn’t there be a seat aboard Airforce One, up forward somewhere, for a type like this? And when Secretary Sully isn’t flying, he’ll be walking the corridors of the White House late every evening, checking once, and then twice, to make sure that everybody has gotten out of there and safely home for dinner.

From Rosanne Cash, an extraordinary tone poem—a song in prose.

In the days leading up to the Inauguration, New Yorkers flooded the Internet to find—and offer—rides to the capital. On Craigslist, the options ranged from the paranoid (“NO WEAPONS OF ANY SORT”) to the fun-loving (“Music on the way will be an eclectic mix of Tom Waits, Lily Allen, DJ Earworm mashups, The Aquabats, Postal Service, Grascals, Amanda Palmer, TV on the Radio, Hawaiian, African and more”). After several false starts, I settled on Cory and Amanda, a pair from Seattle, who had decided to take passengers after their rental car was upgraded to an S.U.V.

We met at the Chelsea Hotel early Sunday morning. Besides Cory, who works for MySpace, and Amanda, an education consultant, there was Andy, who writes product descriptions for Amazon, and Alex, who works at a think tank. Before setting out, Cory and Amanda handed out several shades of something called Window Chalk, and the group marked up the car. Then it was off into the snowy yonder.

As the car turned onto 95 South, we got beyond small talk. Cory and Amanda, we learned, had dated until three weeks ago. “We care about each other so deeply that we had to break up,” Amanda explained. Andy said that he had been working on a novel for nine years. Alex took a quick inventory of his gadgets: mouse, MacBook, Flip Mino HD, iPhone charger, MacBook charger, noise-cancelling headphones, and—oh, there’s that Nano. Our carpool was being blogged, video-documented, and twice Twittered. The group decided it needed an official title, and someone suggested “Acama,” an acronym of everyone’s first names. “It sort of sounds like Obama, but not!” Amanda said, and handed out tangerines.

As Team Acama headed through Jersey, the conversation covered such topics as James Carville, “Top Chef,” the merits of dating someone with cable, the Rottweiler that had almost bit Amanda the other day (it belonged to Stella from “Project Runway”), Seattle’s lack of decent pizza, and marathons—everyone but me had run one. I worked up the courage to say, “Guys, in the near but not immediate future I could use a bathroom break.” “Me, too!” Andy said—instant bonding. The car pulled into a gas station, where someone Window Chalked “Team Acama” onto the hood, before noticing the instruction “Not for use on car paint.”

Ten minutes into Delaware, Amanda shrieked: “Oh my God, look at the butt!” Indeed, someone with Maryland plates was mooning Team Acama. Alex started filming with his Flip camera, and the butt sped away.

In Maryland, Andy described his plans to start an online cooking show while Alex read directions from his iPhone. Amanda, seeing a giant pineapple atop a building, remarked, “What a funny thing to see in Maryland.” The team took another bathroom break at a Trader Joe’s and turned into Chevy Chase, where they got a friendly honk from another driver. “Let’s moon her!” Andy said.

In Washington, Cory started feeling sentimental. “I just want to tell you all that I’m really glad I met you,” he said. “This group far exceeded what I hoped to find on Craigslist.” He parked the car at the Whole Foods on P Street, and Team Acama vowed to meet on the other side of Tuesday.

In the January 26, 2009, issue of The New Yorker, Gary Giddins writes about the jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, who performed at the Blue Note, in New York City, last week, with the bassist Ron Carter and the drummer Paul Motian.

In this video, Frisell talks about how he became a jazz musician, and what it’s like to play alongside two of his musical idols.

In the January 26, 2009, issue of the magazine, Atul Gawande writes about health-care reform.

Submit questions for Gawande here; he will post his answers in the coming weeks. Your questions may be edited for length and clarity, and will be answered at The New Yorker’s discretion.

If you’re Christian or Jewish or pagan,
Whether you favor Obama or Reagan,
A successor to Rahm?
Pull the lever for Tom.
It’s as easy as saying, “Vote Geoghegan!”