Inauguration hype

So there are going to be 4 million people here for the inauguration? That's the number everyone likes to throw around. And anything is possible. But it's a figure that's not actually based on anything.

In fact, on Thursday, the Secret Service explicitly contradicted the idea: "We have seen nothing to suggest that there will be 4 million people in attendance, but if that many people come, we will be prepared for it." (the Washington Times was right, I think, to deem this front-page news; the Post, meanwhile, put it in the third paragraph of it's article, on B1).

So where did the 4 million thing start? Katharine Seelye tried to track it down:

The number first materialized in a Nov. 18 newspaper article, which said the District of Columbia and federal officials were "preparing for as many as 4 million people" for the inaugural.

That estimate seems to have been extracted from a quote from Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, who said: "We will have crowds that will be two, three, maybe even four times as large as the largest inaugural," which some estimate was 1.2 million people at Lyndon Johnson’s in 1965.

I'm not sure about that second paragraph; did Seelye actually confirm that the Post wrote 4 million based on multiplying 1.2 by four (and wouldn't that, um, equal 4.8?). Maybe D.C. explicitly told them "4 million."

Anyhow, regardless of how exactly the figure started, Mayor Fenty subsequently said "3 to 5 million." When pressed on the source of the number, he admitted that 3 million is simply the estimated capacity of the mall and the parade route, assuming 3 square feet per person. Right...