Whatever the reason, seeing the restored star-spangled banner came as an antidote. For all the flag-waving, for all the more-patriotic-than-thou divisiveness of a presidential campaign, here finally was authenticity - "the real thing."
That is how historian David McCullough described it during the dedication ceremony - not just the star-spangled banner, but the entirety of the museum's holdings: The microphone that FDR used for his fireside chats, Thomas Edison's light bulb, even Mr. Rogers' cardigan sweater.
"They are all," he said, "the real thing."
Surely, there is something uniquely American about the museum's wild mix of possessions. Can there be any other country that in a single building displays the flag that inspired its national anthem and Dorothy's ruby slippers? Clara Barton's ambulance and the desk at which Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence? Julia Child's kitchen and George Washington's military uniform?
It is heady company, and yet the star-spangled banner has pride of place, taking center stage of the $85 million renovation.
It is a story that is familiar - or should be familiar - to every Baltimore schoolchild, how Maj. George Armistead, commander of the forces at Fort McHenry, commissioned Mary Pickersgill to make him a flag "so large that the British will have no difficulty seeing it from a distance." At 30-by-42-feet, it certainly was that, and so large that Pickersgill and her assistants had to take their fabric, needles and thread from her home on East Pratt Street and complete it at a nearby brewery.
Flying over the fort, it survived bombardment by the British (not to mention, in later years, the scissors of souvenir seekers, one of whom clipped out a star). Seeing the banner wave the next morning, Key was inspired to write his now-famous words.
"Today, nearly two centuries after they were composed," Bush said yesterday, "his words are written on the heart of every American and written into our law as our country's national anthem."
Bush went on to draw a thread through some of the museum's exhibits and American history. He noted that he was speaking on the very day, 145 years later, that President Abraham Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address, and that the White House's copy of the speech, in Lincoln's hand, has been lent to the museum for display until early January.
