At risk of picking nits: they don't put up a million chairs. I attended the 2012 inauguration and we all stood on the grass in the National Mall. (I agree with

At risk of picking nits: they don't put up a million chairs. I attended the 2012 inauguration and we all stood on the grass in the National Mall. (I agree with your overall point though. There were speaker towers arranged at intervals down the mall and plenty of crowd control involved in getting people to and from the event in the first place, none of which had to have been cheap.)