With only his family beside him, Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into office for a second term in advance of Monday’s public pomp, facing a bitterly divided government at home and persistent threats abroad that inhibit his effort to redefine America’s use of power.
It was a brief and intimate moment in the White House, held because of a quirk of the calendar that placed the constitutionally mandated start of the new term on a Sunday.
But the low-key event seemed to capture tempered expectations after four years of economic troubles and near-constant partisan confrontation. And it presaged a formal inauguration on Monday that will be less of a spectacle than the first one, when the nation’s first black president embodied hope and change for many Americans at a time of financial struggle and war.
For Monday’s festivities, with the traditional parade, balls, and not least the re-enacted swearing-in outside the Capitol, there will be fewer parties and fewer people swarming the National Mall; organizers expect less than half the 1.8 million people who flocked to the city last time.
Once the parties end, Obama’s second-term challenges are formidable, not least given his ambitious priorities of addressing the national debt, illegal immigration and gun violence.
The economy, while recovering steadily, remains fragile. The unemployment rate is as high as it was in January 2009, though it is down from the ten percent peak reached late that year, and there is no consensus with Republicans about additional stimulus measures, or virtually anything else.
And as the terrorist attack in Algeria last week illustrated, Obama continues to confront threats around the globe, both from state actors like Iran and North Korea and from al-Qaeda-inspired extremists seeking to exploit power vacuums in the Mideast and across Africa and Asia.
At home, the emphasis is on reducing the deficits that piled up because of the economic downturn and the soaring costs of caring for an aging population. Yet Obama and Republicans in Congress, divided by opposing views on the role of government, are no closer to a budget agreement that would overhaul taxes and costly, fast-growing entitlement programs like Medicare. The next showdown in what has seemed a never-ending loop of fiscal brinkmanship and half-measures is likely to come as soon as next month over spending cuts.
The persistent partisan battles underscore Obama’s inability to make good on an original promise — that he would open a bipartisan era of problem solving. While Obama’s words have become less soaring and more confrontational toward Republicans after four years in which they sought to foil him, David Plouffe, a senior adviser to Obama said on the CNN program State of the Union that the president had written a “hopeful” inaugural address for Monday’s ceremony.
But Senator John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming, said on the same program: “The President seems so fixated on demonizing Republicans that he is blinded to the opportunities as well as the obligations that he has to deal with the big problems of this country on debt and the entitlements.”
Obama draws approval from just over half of Americans— down eleven percentage points from his popularity in a New York Times/CBS News survey just after his first inauguration— with Republicans united in opposition and independents split. If history is a guide, he has a limited time to act before his post-election leverage fades.
The official swearing-in of Obama 51, was just the seventh time in history that a president was sworn in privately before the public ceremony, and the first since President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration. Each instance since 1821 occurred because the constitutionally mandated date for the inauguration fell on a Sunday.
The simplicity of Obama’s minute-long taking of the oath of office suggested a marriage before a justice of the peace, with a big ceremony and party planned for later.
Only Michelle Obama, holding her family Bible for the ceremony, and the Obama’s daughters, Malia and Sasha, stood beside Obama in the grand Blue Room as he recited the 35-word oath in the Constitution that was administered, as it was four years ago, by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. About a dozen relatives of the Obamas and Jane Roberts, the Chief Justice’s wife, watched out of camera range.
By contrast, the swearing-in hours earlier of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. at the vice-presidential mansion, while simple, was large enough to suggest that Biden is indeed looking beyond the next four years to the 2016 election. Among the 120 guests who watched Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor swear in Biden were Democratic dignitaries from the early presidential-nominating states, including Governor Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. On Saturday evening, Biden attended a party of Democrats from Iowa, the first presidential caucus state.
The private ceremonies were held because, under the Constitution, the two men’s first terms ended at noon on Sunday. In between their events, Obama and Biden went together to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns. And they prayed, separately: the Obamas attended services at the 175-year-old Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the enthusiastic congregation engaged in a call-and-response with the pastor evoking the President’s Forward campaign slogan; the Bidens and their guests celebrated a Mass in the vice-presidential mansion.
In the evening, Obama, Biden, and their wives attended a gala for donors to both the 2012 campaign and the inaugural expenses, where performers included Stevie Wonder.
For Obama the solemnity of his swearing-in was broken by his younger daughter, Sasha, who seemed to recall the problem four years earlier, when a garbling of the oath by both her father and Chief Justice Roberts at the Capitol forced them to repeat the oath at the White House the next day.
With warmth that belied their political differences, especially over campaign spending law, Justice Roberts congratulated Obama, and the president thanked him twice as they shook hands. Obama then embraced his wife and daughters in turn. “Good job, Daddy,” Sasha said. “I did it!” he replied, only to have her quip: “You didn’t mess up”, leaving the President chuckling and rolling his eyes as he pivoted to thank the small group of witnesses and exit the room.
Elsewhere on a sunny winter Sunday, the streets of Washington were snarled with traffic, and hotels and homes were filling with the tens of thousands of visitors who, along with area residents, began partying through the weekend in bars and at receptions hosted by corporations and political groups.
Democratic women were especially fêted. At a party sponsored by Emily’s List, which helps elect Democratic women who favor abortion rights, the talk was of 2016 and whether Hillary Rodham Clinton, the departing secretary of state, might run for president.
Flags, bunting, and red, white and blue lights festooned streets, buildings, and grounds, but, as usual for such events, also ubiquitous were cement and metal security barriers, along with police and troops on downtown blocks.
Much is changed since January of 2009, and much of it not in the way Obama planned. His challenges ahead are perhaps not so great as then— 779,000 people lost their jobs that January, a one-month record, the financial and auto industries were teetering, and millions of Americans were losing homes and savings— but they are nonetheless daunting.
While Democrats controlled Congress for his first two years, when Obama passed his signature laws for economic stimulus, expanded health insurance, and financial industry regulation, Republicans captured the House majority in a conservative backlash at his midterm and are expected to keep it for his second term, given their success in drawing districts to keep them safe for Republicans. That means Obama’s other priorities for a second term— chiefly addressing illegal immigration and gun violence— likewise will hardly come easy, if at all.
Rico says he heard on NPR (which the ladyfriend wakes up to every day) that white folks (which would include Rico) only voted for Obama the first time out of some sense of obligation; not so. Rico voted for him the first time because he was (and remains) the better man. Rico voted for him the second time because he was at least human, unlike his opponent...
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