The 44th president’s reinauguration is set to be more low key than the 2009 event
By the time Barack Obama stands before hundreds of thousands of people today to take the oath of office on the west steps of the Capitol Building in the United States capital, he will officially be 24 hours into his second presidential term.
Presidents must by order of the 20th amendment to the US constitution be sworn in by noon on January 20th.
That date fell yesterday, a Sunday, when courts and federal offices are closed, thus preventing the public ceremony from being held.
To avoid the US being leaderless for a day, Obama was re-sworn as president in a low-key event at noon yesterday. The ceremonial reinauguration takes place today.
At noon Obama will repeat the oath he took in the White House’s Blue Room, the seventh time a president has taken the public oath on a Monday.
It will be the fourth and final time Obama, the 44th president, has sworn the oath.
Four years ago he had to recite the pledge again in private after chief justice John Roberts garbled the oath in the public ceremony, making Obama fluff the 35-word promise. Only Franklin D Roosevelt has taken the presidential oath four times, but for four terms, before presidential terms were limited to two four-year periods.
To mark Martin Luther King jnr Day, Obama will be sworn in using King’s “travelling Bible” as well as the Bible on which he was sworn in four years ago, the one used by president Abraham Lincoln at his first inauguration on March 4th, 1861.
Vice-president Joe Biden will be sworn again on a Bible that has been in his family since 1893. The Bible is “five inches thick” and has “a Celtic cross on the cover”, according to the inauguration organisers, the presidential inaugural committee.
Less festive
Obama’s second inauguration, the 57th since George Washington’s in 1789, is less festive than the party that marked the 2009 swearing-in of the first US black president after an historic election won on promises of change.
An estimated 1.8 million people attended then but fewer than half that number are expected this time.
The public authorities in Washington have lowered the expected number of attendees on the National Mall to between 500,000 and 700,000 – down from an original estimate of about 800,000.
Smaller crowds typically show up for a sitting president’s reinauguration, but twice as many are expected today as attended attended George W Bush’s second inauguration in 2005.
A slow economic recovery, high unemployment and bitter political wrangling between a Democratic White House and a Republican-led House of Representatives over fiscal policies have taken much of the sheen off this reinauguration.
Still, private donors are expected to contribute a sum similar to the $53 million (€40 million) of the $170 million cost of Obama’s first inauguration, a budget likely to be matched this time despite the reduced attendance, according to the inaugural committee.
Two official inaugural balls are being held in the same venue tonight compared with 10 official balls that took place across Washington four years ago.
This is not out of financial restraint in straitened economic times but to avoid the logistical mess of four years ago when Washington’s public transit system struggled to transport hundreds of thousands of people to the balls around the city.
Improved, yet still tight, security and better sign-posting have been put in place to avoid a repeat of the logistical chaos of four years ago when thousands of people with tickets to the swearing-in were stuck in a tunnel below the Mall.
‘America The Beautiful’
The aim on this occasion is to ensure the crowd will be in place on the Mall for the start of the ceremony at 11.30am today.
Shortly after, the vice-president will publicly be sworn in first, by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic on the court, followed by a performance of America The Beautiful by James Taylor.
Other performers include popstars Kelly Clarkson and Beyoncé, who will sing the national anthem.
Among the performers at the inaugural balls will be Katy Perry, Stevie Wonder and Alicia Keys.
Following his swearing-in again by the chief justice, Obama will make his inaugural address in which he is expected to call for political compromise, a reference to his forthcoming fight with Republicans over the raising of the US debt ceiling, and broadly outline his goals for his second term.
After a lunch in the Capitol Building, Obama and his wife Michelle, along with Biden and his wife Jill, will return to the White House mostly by car but they may walk part of the journey.
Inaugural parade
An inaugural parade lasting several hours will follow as bands, dance troupes and other groups representing the 50 states march up Pennsylvania Avenue past the Obamas watching from a viewing platform next to the White House.
Later at a convention centre in Washington, the Obamas will attend the inaugural balls and dance before the cameras.
