Archive for January 20th, 2009
January 20th, 2009
This was the fifth inaugural ceremony that U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo, R-Egan has attended. Tuesday, he was only about 50 feet from President Obama, so he witnessed the swearing in up close.
It doesn’ t matter what party the president is from, Manzullo said, the thing that always moves him to tears is the symbolism of the day.
‘Looking down the National Mall, 2.5 miles long, and seeing a mass of people, and you think that in some countries the only way they change power is people massing together for riots. In this country, we have an election and people have the opportunity to change leaders, and the guy who loses the election calls the guy who won and says congratulations, how can I be of help, and that is the genius of America,” Manzullo said.
“I started thinking back, what was it like when Lincoln did this, or FDR, and Ike, the supreme allied commander who became president,” Manzullo mused.
“That started flashing through my mind, and then you see somebody like Obama, and I turned to (Iowa congressman) Steve King and said that never in my lifetime did I think an African American could become president. Even if you don’t agree with his agenda, it’s significant because America has moved into a new era,” Manzullo said.
January 20th, 2009
I was talking with Dave Lemke of Canterbury Books the other day. He’s the guy who also does the bus tours. Lemke dreamed up the idea of a “Tour of Obamaland.”
That’s right, he’s taking reservations for a busload of folks to tour Hyde Park, Chicago, home of our 44th president.
“Locations included will be the Grant Park location, where Obama celebrated his election day victory. Other locations to be visited (or at least viewed) include his bookstore, barber shop, favorite restaurant, Hyde Park home and many other significant locations of interest,” Lemke writes.
The tour is scheduled for Thursday, April 16th - Cost including lunch in the Hyde Park-University of Chicago area, will be $65 each.
Call Canterbury Tours at 815.398.1454 for reservations,” says Lemke.
January 20th, 2009
The mood on around the nation’s Capitol building was electric, exciting and every other kind of superlative, said Rockford attorney John Nelson, who was lucky enough to have one of the “orange” tickets to the Inaugural ceremony where Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s 44th president. “It’s a pretty good view, actually,” said Nelson.
“You talk about a mass of humanity, well this is it,” Nelson said as he found his seat. He’s kind of a VIP because he’s the 16th Congressional District’s Democratic central committeeman, and an elector who cast one of Illinois’ electoral votes for Obama in December.
“This is unbelievable, there’s a light-hearted mood and I’m meeting people from all over the country,” Nelson said.
Rich Carter, U.S. Rep. Don Manzullo’s press secretary, didn’t have as good luck getting to the big show. “We were stuck in a security line so long that when it got to be 30 minutes before the ceremony was to start, we realized that we weren’t going to get in.”
So , Carter retreated to an indoor location to watch. The Republican congressman had better luck — as a House member he had a VIP ticket.
January 20th, 2009
Polls say that Barack Obama’s approval rating is 83 percent. What? He’s not even inaugurated yet. Starting at noon today, his popularity will begin to diminish, because he will start making real decisions.
Obama is expected to issue a flurry of executive orders, dictating the very slow closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, ordering abortion options included in U.S. aid to birth control grants to poor countries, allowing openly homosexual and lesbian people to serve in the military and reversing anti-environmental orders signed by the outgoing Bush administration.
All those things will bring his approval rating down to the low 60s, still fairly high. He will also name retired senator George Mitchel to be his special envoy to the Middle East and will begin to tilt our foreign policy back from supporting Israel at all costs, to an even-handed approach to the various  Middle  East crises. It’s no accident to me that Israel is pulling out of Gaza and signing a cease fire with Hamas in the final hours of the Bush administration. Israel might no longer have have carte blanche approval from the U.S. to ruthlessly bomb its neighbors.
But it’s the economy that most people expect Obama to put right, a tall, tall order. Looking at the version of his stimulus plan that emerged from a House committee, I fail to see how it’s going to protect or create 2, 3 or 4 million jobs. It’s mostly money that will go to existing entities. What we all thought was going to be a massive public works bill turns out to be just $30 billion for roads, $10 billion for mass transit and $1.1 billion for intercity rail.
Big deal? Not so much. If in 6 months the economy continues to slide, his approval rating goes into the 50s. In a year, if things aren’t getting better, he’s in the 40s, and then if he’s not careful, Obama will join the Bush leagues.
Obama will seriously hurt his relations with business groups if he pushes a “card check” bill that unions expect him to pass in order to make it easier for unions to organize chapters without secret ballot elections. However, he’ll offset that, but only partially, by improving his standing with unions.
Obama will get similarly mixed reactions by promoting the equal pay for equal work bill that feminist groups expect to be passed. It sounds good in theory, but who’s to decide what’s an equal job? Is unloading plywood from a train car equal to entering data into a computer? Beats the heck out of me. You?
If Obama hasn’t delivered the goods on the economy in 2010 he very well could lose Democratic majorities in Congress. To those of you who think the Republicans are dead as door nails, I have one thing to say: 1994.
Shut out of majority status for 40 years, the GOP came storming back that year to take both houses of Congress. Bill Clinton, elected in 1992, faltered miserably during his first two years in office, with his goofy don’t ask don’t tell policy for gays in the military policy, and with his wife Hillary’s draconian health plan that never made it out of what was supposed to be a friendly Congress. Voters decided to hire the Republicans instead. They passed welfare reform, which Clinton signed and promptly took credit for after vetoing similar legislation twice.
The American people have given a tremendous victory to Barack Obama, just as they did to Bill Clinton. The latter squandered his political capital. Let’s hope Obama learned from Bill’s mistakes.
And that’s the view of a skeptical reporter who’s been covering politics since 1972.
