The new president addresses the nation and speaks of work and sacrifice and makes clear that Bush policies will change.
By Cathleen Decker
2:20 PM PST, January 20, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles — Barack Hussein Obama took the oath of office today as the nation’s 44th president — and the nation’s first black chief executive — and told Americans shaken by economic despair and war that shared sacrifice would be required to draw the nation back to prosperity and peace.
“Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed,” Obama declared in a ringing inaugural address. “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America.
“For everywhere we look, there is work to be done,” he said, ticking off needs in the areas of the economy, energy, education and myriad other fronts. “All this we can do, and all this we will do.”
Obama’s day was replete with the emotion of the past — the son of a white Kansas mother and a Kenyan father took his oath from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln more than a century ago.
But his inaugural address, though filled with eloquent references to American will and its historic successes, was also a sharp attempt to wrest the country from the path set by outgoing President Bush.
Several times, he appeared to repudiate decisions by the Bush administration, including its curbing of some scientific efforts and, most dramatically, decisions that lessened constitutional freedoms in pursuit of the Iraq war and the larger fight against terrorism.
“We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals,” he said. “Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expediency’s sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.”
He took special pains to speak to Muslims, who have bridled at what they saw as Bush’s cavalier treatment and go-it-alone demeanor.
“To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society’s ills on the West — know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”
Obama repeated his 35-word oath before a rapturous and massive crowd, supplemented across the country with separate, if just as boisterous, celebrations. In the carefully scripted inaugural pageant, the swearing-in itself provided one brief bit of spontaneity: Chief Justice Roberts misplaced one word of the oath, then restated it correctly before Obama repeated the line.
Minutes before Obama took office, former Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden became the nation’s new vice president with the assistance of Associate Justice John Paul Stevens.
The day unfolded with the nation invoking the familiar rituals of a peaceful change in power, although history hung in the air.
The day ushered out the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, who came into office vowing to unite the country and led the nation through the tumult of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, only to founder over an ill-managed war in Iraq, lengthening battles in Afghanistan and a downward-spiraling economy.
But the bracing turnover was cultural as much as political, as the nation grasped the import of November’s election again: After 220 years, for the first time it was not a white man taking the oath of office. The fact of Obama’s parentage rippled across the inauguration platform and the assembled crowd, both more diverse than at past inaugurations.
From black Americans who had lived through the civil-rights era and who had never presumed they would see such a day as this, to Americans whose experience of discrimination is limited to history books, Obama’s journey evoked both emotions and echoes. He took the oath of office looking westward toward the Lincoln Memorial and its great marble likeness of the president who freed America’s slaves. The steps of the very same memorial welcomed, in 1939, black contralto Marian Anderson after she was refused entrance to Constitution Hall, and in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. for his “I Have a Dream” speech. On Sunday, at the first of the inaugural festivities, a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, Obama sat there as president-elect, his dream realized.
Before the swearing-in, Nelson and Tina Daniel stood in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd at the foot of the Washington Monument, halfway between the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol. The Los Angeles residents had staked out their position at 5 a.m.
“This is big history,” said Nelson Daniel, a 63-year-old African American. “Once-in-a-lifetime experience. My mother and grandparents dreamed of it. I have a chance to witness it for them.”
Also in the crowd was Gloria Washington-Lewis Randall, an African American from Alabama who spent 2 1/2 weeks in jail for participating in a civil-rights demonstration in 1963. Now, at 62, she watched the ceremonies via one of the giant viewing screens set up on the Mall.
“I’m totally ecstatic,” she said. “You don’t really notice the cold out here. It’s a warmness that’s coming up. Because no more will we be called black or white. We’ll be called Americans.”
A counterpoint to the enthusiasm greeting Obama was the grim reality facing the new administration. Obama inherits the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti-American sentiment around the globe and, at home, the harshest economic crisis since the Great Depression. Much of his transition was spent trying to infuse optimism that his proposals will work, while simultaneously warning Americans that recovery will take years, not months.
He returned to that sentiment in his address, as he repeated vows he made during his long and arduous campaign for the presidency. He pledged anew to rebuild the country’s decaying roads and bridges and utility systems, reform healthcare and improve education. He brushed aside past partisan disputes.
“What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them — that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply,” he said, reprising a campaign theme. “The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end.”
Turning to foreign policy, he reiterated his view — much criticized during the campaign — that the nation ought to rely more on nimble diplomacy than a muscular display of strength.
“Our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint,” he said.
He promised to “begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people,” with no mention of a timetable for doing so. He also said he would “forge a hard-earned peace” in Afghanistan, where opponents have proved intractable. But he gave no quarter to those who have fought Americans, whether in skyscrapers in New York or the streets overseas.
“We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you,” he said.
Obama’s improbable journey began less than two years ago when, with what even he acknowledged was “a certain presumptuousness,” he announced his candidacy for president in a speech in Springfield, Ill., Lincoln’s adopted hometown. At the time, Obama had served only two years in the United States Senate.
Few gave him strong odds at the beginning of his quest. Hillary Rodham Clinton was the front-runner and all-but-certain nominee, but as the pre-primary polling gave way to the sentiments of actual voters, her veneer of inevitability cracked. Obama’s campaign was built on soaring rhetoric and substance — his early opposition to the Iraq war contrasted sharply with Clinton’s vote for it.
Less measurable early on — but ultimately more potent — was his emotional reach among voters who wanted to turn a page on the divisive politics that many felt Clinton personified. On their backs, and on the backs of young voters whose eventual turnout was suspect until election day, Obama built a stunning, tech-savvy organization. His campaign appearances in the general election regularly drew numbers unseen in past campaigns — 100,000 in St. Louis, 90,000 in Manassas, Va., 75,000 in Kansas City, Mo.
Obama upended the race with a smashing victory in the first contest, the Iowa caucuses, but Clinton came back days later to win in New Hampshire, setting up a grinding primary contest that would last until she relented in June. Like Biden, himself a candidate in 2008, Clinton would find a place in the Obama Administration hierarchy, as the designated secretary of State.
The general election saw Obama trounce Arizona Sen. John McCain, who fought against a sweeping Democratic voter registration effort but ultimately fell under the weight of the economic downturn. McCain also suffered from the election’s anti-Republican cast; the party lost seats in the House and Senate, and Bush leaves office for his Texas retirement with a positive approval rating at less than three in 10 Americans.
Obama, by contrast, has strengthened his hand since election day. Several polls have placed the percentage of Americans who say they feel optimistic about his tenure at more than seven in 10, well above his 53%-46% margin over McCain.
Obama and his wife, Michelle, and Biden and his wife, Jill, began their day by attending services at St. John’s Episcopal Church, the traditional destination for an incoming president, located across Lafayette Park from the White House.
Then they traveled to the president’s residence for coffee with outgoing President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with House and Senate leaders. Bush and his wife, Laura, met the Obamas at the north portico, where they embraced and exchanged greetings. The group later caravaned to the Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony, charting a reversal of the path that Obama’s inaugural parade took this afternoon. In between, he was honored at a lunch in the Capitol, where a key Obama supporter, U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, was taken ill. Kennedy, who has been battling brain cancer, was rushed to a hospital.
The Bushes, meanwhile, departed the city they have called home for the last eight years and had visited often during his father’s earlier presidency. After the inaugural ceremony, the Obamas escorted Bush and his wife, Laura, to a Marine helicopter on the east side of the Capitol; they flew to Andrews Air Force Base, where a jet from the presidential fleet took them home to Texas.
The new president woke this morning to a city overwhelmed with revelers. Suburban parking lots for the city’s subway system were filled before dawn, and masses of people thronged on foot toward entrances to the National Mall. With hours to go before the ceremony, the Mall was packed from the Capitol west to the Washington Monument, and overflow crowds spilled onto the grounds of the Lincoln Memorial as well.
Yet concerns that the crush of people would prompt security crises and cellphone network implosions were largely unrealized. The crowds were docile, if cold, and temperatures topped out in the low 30s. Although there were no massive traffic tie-ups, there was pedestrian gridlock. As the crowd dispersed after Obama’s speech, the sea of visitors moved en masse toward whatever direction appeared to allow movement, butting up against the security barriers that blocked free access to the Mall and parade route.
Those who captured a front-row perch along Pennsylvania Avenue for the parade were rewarded twice — midway down the route and near the White House — when both the Obamas and the Bidens hopped out of their armored limousines to wave at the crowds. The president and first lady walked hand in hand at times, beaming with broad smiles, seemingly oblivious to the cold.
The district swarmed not only with security forces — seen and unseen — but also those who seized on the inauguration as their personal ticket out of economic malaise. T-shirts, knit caps, key chains, pencils, coffee mugs, American flags, all decorated with Obama’s face, were being vigorously hawked across the district. The chaotic display competed with the formal red-white-and-blue bunting that draped the graceful old Capitol, the stately backdrop for the drama.
But most were not in it for the money. Elizabeth Austin, 86, walked alone from her house in the cold, but found herself blocked from the parade route by iron gates, blocks from any of the action. She had worked for years at the Capitol, as a cook. She looked frail and vulnerable against the mass of surging visitors, but no matter, she was there.
“It’s history,” she said.
