Presidential Inauguration
The Inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America.
In this Internet Age change comes to whitehouse.gov while he gives his inaugural address.
And yes the White House now has an Official Blog! If John Kennedy was the first Television President, Barack Obama is our first Web President!
A lot of commentary and analysis on the web I will post some of the most insightful and the best photos from this Historic Day.
The White House Blog
Tuesday, January 20th, 2009 at 12:01 pm
Change has come to WhiteHouse.gov
Welcome to the new WhiteHouse.gov. I'm Macon Phillips, the Director of New Media for the White House and one of the people who will be contributing to the blog.A short time ago, Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and his new administration officially came to life. One of the first changes is the White House's new website, which will serve as a place for the President and his administration to connect with the rest of the nation and the world.
Millions of Americans have powered President Obama's journey to the White House, many taking advantage of the internet to play a role in shaping our country's future. WhiteHouse.gov is just the beginning of the new administration's efforts to expand and deepen this online engagement.
Just like your new government, WhiteHouse.gov and the rest of the Administration's online programs will put citizens first. Our initial new media efforts will center around three priorities:
Communication -- Americans are eager for information about the state of the economy, national security and a host of other issues. This site will feature timely and in-depth content meant to keep everyone up-to-date and educated. Check out the briefing room, keep tabs on the blog (RSS feed) and take a moment to sign up for e-mail updates from the President and his administration so you can be sure to know about major announcements and decisions.
Transparency -- President Obama has committed to making his administration the most open and transparent in history, and WhiteHouse.gov will play a major role in delivering on that promise. The President's executive orders and proclamations will be published for everyone to review, and that’s just the beginning of our efforts to provide a window for all Americans into the business of the government. You can also learn about some of the senior leadership in the new administration and about the President’s policy priorities.
Participation -- President Obama started his career as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago, where he saw firsthand what people can do when they come together for a common cause. Citizen participation will be a priority for the Administration, and the internet will play an important role in that. One significant addition to WhiteHouse.gov reflects a campaign promise from the President: we will publish all non-emergency legislation to the website for five days, and allow the public to review and comment before the President signs it.
We'd also like to hear from you -- what sort of things would you find valuable from WhiteHouse.gov? If you have an idea, use this form to let us know. Like the transition website and the campaign's before that, this online community will continue to be a work in progress as we develop new features and content for you. So thanks in advance for your patience and for your feedback.
Later today, we’ll put up the video and the full text of President Obama’s Inaugural Address. There will also be slideshows of the Inaugural events, the Obamas’ move into the White House, and President Obama’s first days in office.
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Could an African-American President be the one who finally ends the cultural civil war that has been roiling American politics since the 1960s: liberal versus conservative, red versus blue, Democrat versus Republican? Both Bill Clinton and George Bush set out to end it. Clinton was "new Democrat." Bush was the compassionate conservative and the uniter. Both got trapped in the culture wars and ended up leaving the country more divided than ever. Clinton and Bush were the bookend Presidents of the Baby Boom generation.
Obama is technically a Baby Boomer – he was born near the tail end of the Baby Boom. But his approach and philosophy look beyond the Baby Boomers’ experience. He wrote in "The Audacity of Hope" about his desire to move beyond "the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation –- a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago."
Big goals, and a clear departure from the past
Posted: 12:27 PM ET
WASHINGTON (CNN) — The call to unity is very much Obama’s trademark –- reaching across barriers, ending "the recriminations and worn-out dogmas." That’s what he means by changing politics in Washington. And right away, he addresses some clear departures from the Bush approach.
The choice between safety and ideals is false, he says. Without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control. There's a clear acknowledgment of the global warming crisis ("the way we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.")
He's one of the few modern Presidents who has reached out to "non-believers" as well as Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus.
"The world has changed, and we must change with it." His theme of "change" carried him through the campaign. Voters saw it as change from Bush. Now he is using it to call for big policy changes, calling this "a moment that will define a generation" — very much like Kennedy in 1961.
"Remaking America" — no small ambition, starting with the literal reconstruction of our infrastructure. He has "big plans" –- and a big crisis that can help him carry them through.
But still, there's an overriding realism. His answer to the old partisan debate: "The question is not whether our government is too big or small, but whether it works." It’s the pragmatist’s answer. Does it work?
Dr King said it might take 40 years. It's been 45 years, I can wait another hour 
Ronald Brisbon
Washington resident
Washington resident
Obama: Challenges will be met
From The Daily Scotsman;
President Barack Obama warned of "gathering clouds and raging storms" today. But he also delivered a message of hope as he was inaugurated as the first black President of the United States.
He said: "Every so often the oath (of office) is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms".
At such times America had to remand true to our founding document", he said.
And he added: "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real.
"They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America – they will be met."
Describing the challenges ahead, he said: "That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood.
"Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred.
"Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.
"Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet."
But he said people had chosen "hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord".
President Obama said: "On this day we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics."
Evoking the pioneering spirit of America, Mr Obama said that it was the "risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things" that had carried America "up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom".
He said: "Time and again these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might have a better life."
He went on: "Starting today we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of America."
The economy, he said, needed "bold and swift" action to create jobs and stimulate growth.
He also called for a need to restore "the vital trust between a people and their government".
In a bid to rebuild America's standing oversees, Mr Obama said: "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 added that earlier generations of Americans had faced down fascism and communism "not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions".
He said: "Power alone cannot protect us."
The US would "begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan".
President Obama said his country would work to lessen the nuclear threat and "roll back the spectre of a warming planet".
As a country "shaped by every language and culture" the President vowed to "play its role in ushering a new era of peace".
Mr Obama continued: "Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history."
As such, he called for a "return to these truths".
Obama sworn in as 44th U.S. president
The Los Angeles Times
The capital is crowded with color and celebration as the nation's first black president takes office. Despite the challenges of wars and a foundering economy, he rides a wave of optimism.
Reporting from Los Angeles -- Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into office as the nation's 44th president today, assuming leadership of a nation riven by war and economic despair but embracing the improbable ascension of a first-term Illinois senator as the nation's first black chief executive.With his hand on a Bible used by Abraham Lincoln more than a century ago, Obama repeated the 35-word oath before a rapturous and massive crowd, supplemented across the country with separate, if just as boisterous, celebrations. Minutes before Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. ushered Obama into 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. On the stand as Obama took the oath were members of the Supreme Court, Congress and family and friends of the incoming leaders.
After formally becoming president, Obama was due to deliver an inaugural address that will warn Americans of difficult days ahead and call for a new spirit of bipartisan sacrifice to solve the varied problems facing the country -- themes familiar from Obama's long trek to the White House.
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 will take as it kicks off later today.
Obama 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, massive traffic tie-ups and cellphone network implosions were largely unrealized in the early hours. The crowds were docile, if cold, and temperatures were expected to top out in the 30s.
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 facts of Obama's parentage -- he is the son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansas-born mother -- 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 has evoked strong emotions and echoes. He took the oath of office with a view 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.
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.
The inaugural festivities opened Sunday with the star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial, where Obama invoked an optimistic yet sober approach.
"There is no doubt that our road will be long," Obama said. "That our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help me reveal that character once more."
On Monday, Obama, Biden and their families took part in several community-service events to commemorate the King holiday. Obama toured a shelter for homeless teenagers, demonstrating his technique as he took up a roller to coat a wall with "Laguna blue" paint. At his next stop, where local service groups were working on projects to benefit American troops, Obama returned to the notion that all Americans will have to pitch in to restore the nation's momentum.
"I am making a commitment to you as the next president that we are going to make government work," he said. "But . . . government can only do so much. If we're waiting for someone else to do something, it never gets done."
Obama's last night before assuming the presidency was spent at three dinners meant to reinforce his message of bipartisanship. They honored McCain; former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who had endorsed Obama before the election; and Biden.
"We'll see you tomorrow," Obama said to huge applause.
Today dawned, and the Mall 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.
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this article.
After formally becoming president, Obama was due to deliver an inaugural address that will warn Americans of difficult days ahead and call for a new spirit of bipartisan sacrifice to solve the varied problems facing the country -- themes familiar from Obama's long trek to the White House.
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 will take as it kicks off later today.
Obama 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, massive traffic tie-ups and cellphone network implosions were largely unrealized in the early hours. The crowds were docile, if cold, and temperatures were expected to top out in the 30s.
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 facts of Obama's parentage -- he is the son of a Kenyan father and a white Kansas-born mother -- 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 has evoked strong emotions and echoes. He took the oath of office with a view 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.
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.
The inaugural festivities opened Sunday with the star-studded concert at the Lincoln Memorial, where Obama invoked an optimistic yet sober approach.
"There is no doubt that our road will be long," Obama said. "That our climb will be steep. But never forget that the true character of our nation is revealed not during times of comfort and ease, but by the right we do when the moment is hard. I ask you to help me reveal that character once more."
On Monday, Obama, Biden and their families took part in several community-service events to commemorate the King holiday. Obama toured a shelter for homeless teenagers, demonstrating his technique as he took up a roller to coat a wall with "Laguna blue" paint. At his next stop, where local service groups were working on projects to benefit American troops, Obama returned to the notion that all Americans will have to pitch in to restore the nation's momentum.
"I am making a commitment to you as the next president that we are going to make government work," he said. "But . . . government can only do so much. If we're waiting for someone else to do something, it never gets done."
Obama's last night before assuming the presidency was spent at three dinners meant to reinforce his message of bipartisanship. They honored McCain; former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who had endorsed Obama before the election; and Biden.
"We'll see you tomorrow," Obama said to huge applause.
Today dawned, and the Mall 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.
cathleen.decker@latimes.com
Richard Simon in Washington contributed to this article.
New President, New Limousine
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