January 20, 2013
WASHINGTON: The United States' first mixed race president was sworn in for second term on Sunday amid palpably less popular enthusiasm and energy, pointing to four more challenging years in the White House at a time of gradual waning of American power.
January 20, 2013
WASHINGTON: The United States' first mixed race president was sworn in for second term on Sunday amid palpably less popular enthusiasm and energy, pointing to four more challenging years in the White House at a time of gradual waning of American power.
US President Barack Obama takes the oath of office as first lady Michelle Obama holds the bible in the Blue Room of the White House in Washington on January 20, 2013.
The two million people who poured into Washington DC four years ago for his historic swearing in was a distant memory as President Obama was administered oath of office in a brief, quiet ceremony in the White House East Room by Justice John Roberts to meet a constitutional deadline, under which the term of the President and vice-president ends at noon on the 20th day of January.
Because January 20 is a Sunday, and courts and public institutions that officially record and endorse the swearing in are closed, the formality will be repeated publicly on Monday on the steps of the Capitol Hill, in front of which an estimated 600,000-800,000 people who are expected to witness the spectacle in icy weather.
However, on Sunday, it was just the President, his family, and a closed group who witnessed Justice Roberts swear in the President in a private ceremony without the fumbles (from both) that characterized the first term oath-taking. That occasion, a first for both the oath-administrator and oath taker, was marked by verbal stumbling and misplaced words as the two men were completely out of sync, necessitating a repeat inside the White House just to silence doubts about its legality.
This time the order was reversed. The two offices had exchanged oath cards detailing the precise words, sequence, and pauses, to prevent another mishap and the first ceremony went off without hiccup as Obama took oath on a family Bible. Justice Roberts read from a cue card, the President repeated correctly after him, and once the oath was administered, Obama hugged his wife and daughters and chuckled, "I did it!"
On Monday, he will take oath on bibles used by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King. In a separate ceremony, vice-president Joseph Biden was administered the oath of office by associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Despite the relatively low key swearing in, there was an element of history on the occasion considering Obama will own the record for being the first mixed-race president to be elected for a second term (and share the recon for being sworn in four times in all with Roosevelt). He is also the third president in a row to win two terms (after Bush and Clinton); the last time that happened was nearly two centuries ago when Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe won two terms each between 1801 and 1825.
While this might lead one to believe all is hunky-dory and Obama is on a roll, previews of the President's second term are largely gloomy given the generally lackadaisical record of his White House forbears who won four more years. George W Bush, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon all suffered domestic and international mishaps after being re-elected to a second term, and although Obama appears to have cleared the international deck by winding down two wars to focus on issues at home, he presides over a deeply partisan Congress reflecting an overspent, divided country.
Obama is reportedly aware of the uphill battles ahead as also the legacy issue that pervades the second term of every president. Accounts of him conferring with historians show that he is focused on President Dwight Eisenhower, a former general who ended a war and tried to curb military spending leading to his reference to the infamous "military-industrial complex".
President Obama has already put in place two men in crucial positions to undertake a downsizing of US footprint in keeping with domestic compulsions and changing geo-political dynamics of the 21st century. Both John Kerry and Chuck Hagel, presumptive secretaries of state and defense respectively, are decorated Vietnam combat veterans, who are decided anti-war and cautious about US military interventionism. This will have its own fall-out on hotspots across the world, from the Indian subcontinent where a messy endgame is underway in Afghanistan, to the Far East where China and Japan have begun an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation.
For India, bilateral prospects during Obama's second term, including a second visit to New Delhi, look good. The President himself told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at the East Asia summit in Cambodia that "India is a big part of my plans" during his second term. Although there will be just about a one-year overlap between their terms, the relationship has acquired the sort of bipartisanship that any successor to Singh is expected to provide continuity.
Courtesy: TOi
