January 22, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the New York Daily News:
New President Barack Obama quick to put kibosh on Bush policies on Day 1
By KENNETH R. BAZINET
WASHINGTON — President Obama took command on his first full day in the White House on Wednesday, moving swiftly and firmly to steer the ship of state in a dramatic new direction.
From the moment Obama stepped into the Oval Office at 8:35 a.m., he moved at a breakneck pace to undo George W. Bush’s unpopular domestic policies, reach out to foreign leaders and bring more transparency to his administration.
And that was just by lunchtime.
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(See also: Barack Obama’s Career in Front Pages
and Obama’s Historic Victory)
January 21, 2009: An excerpt from an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Obama’s America: Hard choices, big plans
Under a bright, sunny sky in the nation’s capital Tuesday, a simple chant swept through the crowd: Change is here.
Yes, America, change has arrived.
On Tuesday, Barack Hussein Obama became the nation’s first black president.
On Tuesday, America changed forever.
But Obama himself chose not to speak of change. Instead, the 44th president called for a retrenchment of sorts.
The seeds of an American renewal are already at hand, Obama said.
“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old,” Obama said in his inaugural address. “These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.”
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January 21, 2009
Chicago Tribune
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January 21, 2009
RedEye
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January 21, 2009
The Honolulu Advertiser
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January 21, 2009
The Washington Post
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January 21, 2009
The New York Times
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January 21, 2009
Newsday
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January 21, 2009
The Wall Street Journal
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January 21, 2009
USA Today
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January 21, 2009
Sun Sentinel
(Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
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January 21, 2009
St. Petersburg Times
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January 21, 2009
The News Virginian
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January 21, 2009
The Roanoke Times
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January 21, 2009
The Virginian-Pilot
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January 21, 2009
Daily Press
(Hampton Roads, Virginia)
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January 21, 2009
The Lima News
(Ohio)
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January 21, 2009
The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland, Ohio)
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January 21, 2009
St. Paul Pioneer Press
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January 21, 2009
Hartford Courant
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January 21, 2009
The Baltimore Sun
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January 21, 2009
The Times Leader
(Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania)
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January 21, 2009
The Courier News
(Elgin, Illinois)
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January 21, 2009
Detroit Free-Press
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January 21, 2009
Daily Herald
(Suburban, Chicago)
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January 21, 2009
The Huntsville Times
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January 21, 2009
The Grand Island Independent
(Grand Island, Nebraska)
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January 21, 2009
Rocky Mountain News
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January 21, 2009
The Dispatch
(Casa Grande, Arizona)
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January 21, 2009
Las Vegas Sun
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January 21, 2009
Las Vegas Review-Journal
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January 21, 2009
The Salt Lake Tribune
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January 21, 2009
The Bakersfield Californian
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January 21, 2009
San Francisco Chronicle
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January 21, 2009
San Jose Mercury News
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January 21, 2009
The Examiner
(San Francisco)
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January 21, 2009
The Oregonian
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January 21, 2009
The Seattle Times
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January 20, 2009: An excerpt from an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:
A unity president
When Americans elect a president, they often don’t know what sort of challenges he will face — big or small, transient or unforgettable. Eight years ago, watching the inauguration of George W. Bush, the citizenry had no idea that the future would bring the worst terrorist attack in our history, two long-lasting wars or a devastating financial panic. His presidency turns out to have been far more momentous than most people, Bush included, probably ever expected.
Barack Obama’s, by contrast, is momentous already. He is different from any president who has gone before, and he faces the most ominous economic crisis since the Depression. Not only that, but Obama has portrayed himself as offering a new kind of politics, aiming to foster unity rather than exploit division. He and circumstances have set a formidable standard, and he will be judged against it.
….The ceremonies in Washington today showcase our common commitment to the ideals on which America was founded. Even more than most inaugurations, this one reaffirms that out of many, we are one.
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January 20, 2009
Newsday
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January 20, 2009
Sun Herald
(Biloxi, Mississippi)
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January 20, 2009
RedEye
(Chicago)
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January 20, 2009
Chicago Sun-Times
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January 20, 2009
The Boston Globe
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January 20, 2009
Boston Herald
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January 20, 2009
Hartford Courant
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January 20, 2009
The Washington Post
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January 20, 2009
St. Petersburg Times
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January 20, 2009
Orlando Sentinel
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January 20, 2009
New York Post
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January 20, 2009
Staten Island Advance
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January 20, 2009
Philadelphia Daily News
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January 20, 2009
USA Today
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January 20, 2009
Detroit Free Press
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January 20, 2009
The Indianapolis Star
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January 20, 2009
The News & Observer
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January 20, 2009
Lexington Herald-Leader
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January 20, 2009
El Nuevo Heraldo
(Brownsville, Texas)
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January 20, 2009
The Denver Post
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January 20, 2009
The Salt Lake Tribune
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January 20, 2009
San Francisco Chronicle
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January 20, 2009
San Jose Mercury News
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January 20, 2009
The Seattle Times
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January 20, 2009
Herald
(Everett, Washington)
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January 19, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the New York Daily News:
Countdown to inauguration continues as Barack Obama evokes Martin Luther King’s dream
By MICHAEL SAUL and DAVID SALTONSTALL
Mixing reverence and revelry, Barack Obama spent his last Sunday as a private citizen praying, honoring our nation’s fallen, and later ba-rockin’ with an all-star cast of singers under Abe Lincoln’s watchful gaze.
Before a sea of hundreds of thousands of frosty fans packing the Washington Mall, on the same Lincoln Memorial steps where Martin Luther King Jr. once proclaimed his dream, Obama vowed to try and lift up the nation’s spirit.
“Welcome to this celebration of American renewal,” he said before touching upon the stark challenges ahead, including two wars and an economy more tattered than any time since the Great Depression.
“Anything is possible in America,” he told the hushed crowd.
“I won’t pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy,” he said. “But despite all of this, despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead, I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure — that the dream of our founders will live on in our time.”
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January 19, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the Hampton Roads, Virginia newspaper, the Daily Press:
A day of stars and dreams in Washington
By ROBIN ABCARIAN and JILL ZUCKMAN (Tribune Washington Bureau)
WASHINGTON — It was a day that combined highminded political rhetoric with the very best of pop culture. Tens of thousands of citizens, a throng more than a mile long on the National Mall, braved frigid weather and long security lines to attend a historic concert celebrating the country’s first black president, held at the feet of the monument honoring the country’s great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln.
….Martin Luther King III stood on nearly the same spot where his father delivered the famous “I have a dream” speech in 1963 that informs so much of the emotion evoked by the election of the country’s first black president. The son of the slain civil rights leader introduced a clip of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural speech — with its noted line “Ask not what your country can do for you .. .. .” — and said that Monday’s holiday, Martin Luther King Day, should be a day of service to others. (The Obamas and Bidens will be celebrating the holiday by performing yet-unannounced acts of public service, and they have encouraged others to do the same.)
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January 19, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the Green Bay Press-Gazette:
Parishioner: King’s work paved the way for Obama’s election
By TONY WALTER
Spirituality, not politics or prophet, were on the program Sunday at the Divine Temple Church of God in Christ in Green Bay.
But the major events of the next two days — celebration of Martin Luther King Day and the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama — were on the minds and tongues of many in the predominantly black congregation.
“This is the way it was supposed to be,” said founder and Pastor L.C. Green in his benediction to a congregation of about 100.
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the Belleville, Illinois newspaper, the Sunday News-Democrat:
Metro-east will be well-represented at Obama inauguration
By JENNIFER A. BOWEN
Cars, buses and planes loaded with people from the metro-east and Southern Illinois are headed to Washington, D.C., to witness the historic inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama.
An East St. Louis man who organized four bus loads of folks to see the inauguration, a pair of women who lived in the South during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, a junior high student who is visiting the nation’s capital for the second time and two sisters who plan to dress in historic ball gowns to attend an inaugural ball at the Smithsonian Institution are among the millions expected to attend the inauguration Tuesday.
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a collection of personal stories in the Macon, Georgia newspaper, The Telegraph:
Bobbie Brown, 71, retired nurse, Macon
(as told to Joe Kovac Jr.)
“As an African-American, I never really dreamed that I would see this in my lifetime. Do you understand what I’m saying? So I want to be in that atmosphere in Washington. … I just want to be there. … It’s on a bigger scale than the march on Washington with Martin (Luther King Jr.). I was in school at the time so I did not go. I wished that I could have been there. I closed my eyes and projected myself there many times. It was a great time for us. … This is even more so.”
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the St. Paul Pioneer Press:
The man of the moment
By STEVEN THOMMA (McClatchy Newspapers)
WASHINGTON — When Barack Obama lifts his hand from Abraham Lincoln’s Bible at his inauguration, he won’t be just the new president of the United States. He’ll be the face of a new era.
He’s not the cause of the changing times, either the upheaval in the land or the hunger for something new seen in the million or more faces who will stream into Washington to watch him take the oath.
Rather, he reflects a new age that’s already dawning.
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the Baltimore Sun:
Thousands brave the cold to see their next president
By ROBERT LITTLE
Barack Obama arrived in Baltimore yesterday on the next-to-last stop of his two-year trip to the White House, paying homage to the city’s history as he urged a crowd of 40,000 well-wishers to support and defend America with the same fervor as their counterparts who defended Fort McHenry.
Walking onto a temporary stage at War Memorial Plaza with a shout of “Hello, Baltimore! Thank you, Baltimore!” Obama called on Americans to make sure that his election as the 44th president “is not the end of what we do to change America, but the beginning.”
“We are here today not simply to pay tribute to those patriots who founded our nation in Philadelphia or defended it in Baltimore, but to take up the cause for which they gave so much,” said Obama, who had left Philadelphia by private train earlier in the day on the way to Washington and his inauguration on Tuesday.
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a story in the Wilmington, Delaware newspaper, the Sunday News Journal:
The journey begins
Retracing Lincoln’s route, Obama evokes 16th president’s spirit for enthralled crowd
By MIKE CHALMERS, ANGIE BASIOUNY and ESTEBAN PARRA
In perhaps the most celebrated commute in history, Barack Obama swung through Wilmington Saturday to pick up co-worker Joe Biden.
Along the way, tens of thousands lined the tracks, crowded train platforms and gathered in Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore to see the pair three days before they take their place as the nation’s first black president and Delaware’s first vice president.
“I would stand in Antarctica to watch this,” said 10-year-old Zoi Council, who came to the Wilmington event with her parents, Jonathan and Yvette Council of New Castle.
Others along the way — like in Newark, where the train didn’t even slow down — said it was worth braving the cold just to catch a glimpse of the train and be a small part of history.
The trip — which included a stop in Baltimore and slowdowns in Claymont and Edgewood, Md. — was meant to evoke the spirit of the 12-day train trip that Abraham Lincoln took to Washington for his 1861 inauguration.
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January 18, 2009: An excerpt from a story in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
On to History
Throngs brave cold to greet Obama’s train
By THOMAS FITZGERALD and JOELLE FARRELL
WASHINGTON — Thousands of ordinary Americans lined the tracks yesterday to see Barack Obama travel the final stretch of his journey to the White House by train, cheering him on with fluttering flags, waves, and handmade signs offering prayers.
Bundled against bitter cold, they stood on overpasses, huddled in clearings and backyards, abandoned their cars on the side of the road, lifted children on their shoulders, and took cell-phone pictures from rooftops and ladders.
At a rally in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station at the beginning of the 137-mile trip, Obama vowed to dedicate his term as the 44th president to “perfecting our union,” repeating themes of renewal and hope there and at stops in Wilmington and Baltimore before chilly yet exuberant crowds.
The journey was meant to evoke Abraham Lincoln’s travel by train to his inaugural in 1861, and Obama, as he did throughout his campaign, paid tribute yesterday to his political hero by echoing his words.
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