‘To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward’

Erika Niedowski, Washington Bureau Chief

• Last Updated: January 21. 2009 1:11PM UAE / January 21. 2009 9:11AM GMT

President Barack Obama, left, and the first lady Michelle Obama wave while attending the Neighborhood Inaugural Ball in Washington, on Jan 20 2009. Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

WASHINGTON // Barack Obama, the man who ran an unlikely campaign on change, hope and the promise that anything is possible, was sworn in yesterday as the 44th president of the United States, and the first African-American to hold that office.

Standing before the US Capitol, built in part with slave labour not much more than two centuries ago, Mr Obama took the 35-word oath of office with his right hand raised and his left hand on the Bible – the same Bible used to swear in Abraham Lincoln, the president who set the slaves free.

“I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of president of the United States faithfully, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States,” he said, standing next to his wife, Michelle, and daughters, Malia, 10, and Sasha, seven. “So help me God.”

And with that, Mr Obama – the son of a white Kansan who once relied on food stamps to feed her family and a black Kenyan he never knew well – assumed the presidency from George W Bush in a peaceful transition of power.

Mr Obama, whose inauguration returns the White House to Democratic hands after eight years of a Republican administration, becomes president at a time of enormous challenges and under the weight of colossal expectations both at home and abroad.

And, significantly, he directly addressed the Muslim world, saying “we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect”.

He is the first US president to take office since the September 11 attacks, and the first since Vietnam to assume the role of commander-in-chief during a time of war.

He inherits a crippled economy that he has warned will worsen before it recovers.

All the same, Mr Obama, the 47-year-old former senator from Illinois, comes to power bringing with him great hope – the very thing that fuelled what was at best a long-shot presidential campaign when he announced it nearly two years ago.

The inaugural address, which Malia Obama had told her father “better be good” because it was the first by an African-American, offered the new president the first chance to set the tone for his presidency and send a message to the millions who were listening. In it, he called for “a new era of responsibility”, saying that “starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America”. He said the US was “ready to lead once more”.

“Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real,” Mr Obama said.

“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.

“On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.”

“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

In a speech lasting a little less than 20 minutes, Mr Obama called the United States “a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus, and non-believers”, striking the tone of someone bent on trying to unite a country that already has been through many trying times, and of reaching out to the world. He noted the “bitter swill” of the US civil war and segregation, saying the country has “emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united”.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Mr Obama got to this place – in a country that is still, in many ways, racially divided – by styling himself largely without consideration to race, which he rarely talked about on the campaign trail, except for a few times when he addressed the subject head on and with his characteristic nuance. But his inauguration as the first black US president holds special meaning for tens of millions of African-Americans, including many who remember – and not from reading history books – being denied the right to vote or sit in school with their white peers. The assassination in 1968 of Martin Luther King Jr, whose eldest son was a guest at the inauguration, prompted race riots in this very city whose effects – economically and psychologically – were long-lasting.

Before the ceremony, Mr Obama and Mr Bush travelled together, alone, to the Capitol in an imposing motorcade, a custom that always prompts speculation about what conversation might have taken place; Laura Bush, the outgoing first lady, arrived there with Mrs Obama in a separate vehicle.

At the swearing-in, the outgoing president and his family had a front-row seat, another tradition of what are always highly scripted political handovers. The VIP platform was filled with former US presidents and vice presidents, top Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress as well as Mr Obama’s selections for cabinet posts, including Hillary Clinton, his one-time Democratic rival and the incoming secretary of state.

Some 240,000 people had highly coveted tickets to the ceremony; the day before, Mr Obama invited the pilot and crew of the US Airways jet that recently made an emergency landing on New York’s Hudson River. But scores of others came from near and far to fill the vast park known as the National Mall that was open to anyone who wanted to be a part of history – even if it meant hours standing in the sub-freezing cold or if the closest they could get to Mr Obama was a cardboard cut-out of him.

Just after the swearing-in, the new president escorted his predecessor to a brief departure ceremony, then took part in the traditional inaugural luncheon; the three-course menu included seafood stew, pheasant and duck and an apple cinnamon sponge cake. Mr Obama and Joe Biden, the vice president, were to be presented with several gifts by congressional lawmakers on behalf of the American people: crystal bowls engraved with their names, framed official photographs of each taking the oath of office and the US flags that flew over the Capitol during the ceremony. Later, Mr Obama was to make his way back down the two and a half kilometre inaugural parade route towards his reviewing stand outside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, his new home, which like the US Capitol, was built with the help of slaves.

Mr Obama had long said during the campaign he was not the likeliest candidate for the country’s highest elected office. In Feb 2007, in announcing his campaign, he conceded “a certain presumptuousness” and “a certain audacity”. But while he had not spent much time in Washington, he said at the time, it was long enough to know it needed changing. That, among other things, was what he was hired to do.

In his inaugural address, Mr Obama cited the faltering US economy and noted the country is at war against what he called “a far-reaching network of violence and hatred”. Still, he struck a tone of immense optimism and, as Franklin Delano Roosevelt did when he took the presidential oath in 1933 amid the Great Depression, sought to restore the country’s confidence in itself.

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new,” Mr Obama said. “But those values upon which our success depends – honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true.

“What is demanded, then, is a return to these truths,” he said. “What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility – a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.”

After he was finished, Mr Obama’s family embraced and kissed him, and Malia could be seen offering her assessment.

“That was a good speech,” she said.
eniedowski@thenational.ae