Month: January 2009

Suderman ponders the bookworm-in-chief:

Bush always seemed to think of leadership as akin to sports — focus, endure, keep your energy up, and will away any potential obstacles. Obama, I would guess, will treat it as a complex, perhaps philosophical, piece of fiction, and he will likely want to shape it into something he finds both elegant and true. Of course, I suspect that most every American president sees themselves as the hero of their own story, though what type of story that is varies.  Bush seemed to think he was in an old war movie; Nixon in a paranoid thriller; Reagan, a global-scale western; Clinton, a serio-comic legal farce.  What story Obama believes he is at the center of will, in part, determine how he leads and how he governs. And for both his sake and the nation’s, I hope that it is a story that requires struggle but not failure, intellect but not confusion, ambiguity but not despair — a story that is not just subtly hopeful, in that coy literary way, but genuinely successful.

Drum predicts:

… so far Obama has given every sign — both for good and ill — of taking campaign trail promises unusually seriously. I know it’s premature to say that with any authority, but on taxes and stimulus and DADT and Iraq and a slew of other issues, I’ve been impressed with how seldom he’s given any indication of either backing down from promises or adding in lots of stuff he once said he was against.

Obviously Congress will force plenty of changes on him in the future, and so will events on the ground. But so far, despite the endless rounds of ungrounded rumors and speculation from the punditocracy, the betting man’s line on Obama ought to be pretty simple: just take a look at what he said he was going to do during the campaign. More than likely, that’s what he’s going to do when the rubber meets the road in the Oval Office.

It only took propagandist Michael Goldfarb twenty-two minutes:

Obama has inherited victory in Iraq. Bush has done more than, as McGurn quotes Biden in early 2007, "keep it from totally collapsing…[until he could] hand it off to the next guy." Now rather than retreat in defeat, our new president must manage to withdraw American troops without undermining their success. It will be a tremendous challenge, but the press will not be able to blame Bush if security deteriorates in Iraq after Obama gives the Joint Chiefs their "new mission." The victory in Iraq is Obama’s to lose.

The one thing to remember about the neocons: their shamelessness is their only means of survival. And amnesia – constant, disciplined, carefully organized amnesia.

Wilkinson makes a recommendation:

Because I intend to be pretty hard on Obama, the politician, and his starry-eyed, mush-headed followers, I think it’s important to note that it’s not only possible, but morally recommended, to assume a posture that ought to be comfortable, but is in fact culturally awkward. One should both recognize in Obama a real symbol of morally meaningful cultural change and attack the romance of democracy and the cult of the presidency — because that is the direction of further moral progress.

Amen. But today, a little ebullience and romance are forgivable, no?

Larison gives Bush and his supporters a final kick:

When supporters begin blithely claiming that the war in Iraq is over and we won, or declare that history will vindicate Mr. Bush, they are naturally not taking into account that this war may very well lead to even more terrible blowback in the years and decades to come. Indeed, the full costs of Mr. Bush’s failures will not be known for many years. In the terrible event that there are more disastrous consequences of Mr. Bush’s policies, will his apologists at that point acknowledge that he was a failure, or will they construct new arguments to claim that he cannot be held responsible for what happened later on? We already know the answer to that.

Michelle Cottle isn’t worried about the inaugural bill:

…this inauguration is going to be more expensive than past ones. That said, the cost comparisons with the Bush 2005 festivities ($42 million for Bush vs. somewhere between $125 and $160 million for Obama) are beyond useless, in part because the Bush numbers being bandied about don’t include security costs (which account for the bulk of the bill at these affairs) and in part because the security and logistical needs for welcoming back a garden-variety second-term president are of course going to be vastly smaller than those for the first swearing in of–altogether now!–the first black president in the nation’s history. Nowhere close to half a million people attended Bush’s second inaugural. Washington has been bracing for somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 million for this year’s event. The number of port-a-potties alone causes the mind to reel.   

As for the idea that the entire inaugural spirit should focus "not on celebration but on civic engagement": bollucks. No matter how ominous the economic outlook, the inauguration of a new president is something to celebrate. And, yes, that is all the more true because of the "historic nature" of this particular president. (Translation: OMG! Can you believe we finally elected a black guy!) In addition to feeling the burden of the nation’s current situation, the Obama people are keenly aware of the widespread, pent-up desire to celebrate this day with all of the "ridiculousness" that this country can muster. The entire globe is watching. We should not shortchange the moment.

People gather on the National Mall to witness Barack Obama take the oath of office as 44th US president on January 20, 2009 in Washington, DC. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty.

Check out this page on Obama’s White House website.

Althouse says it was Roberts’s fault:

The Chief Justice in fact screwed up the oath. The Constitution requires:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Roberts left out the word "faithfully." (He also said "President to the United State.") Obama saw the mistake and stopped himself to gave Roberts a chance to fix it. Roberts redid the line, remembering to throw in "faithfully," but putting it in the wrong place — after President of the United States — and, this time, Obama went along with the wording. Close enough, I guess he figured. I wonder what Barack Obama was thinking. Maybe: Some textualist you turned out to be!

My take here. It reminded me a little of Diana’s bungling of her husband’s name at that iconic wedding back in 1981. Sometimes, the nerves win.

And a new blog.