Day One: History and a hard road
Amid the pomp and poignancy of Jan. 20, 2009, a new, young leader faces a monumental task
We try to assess WASHINGTON Barack Obama’s legacy by squinting into the murky future — debating the durability of his policies and programs, wondering what the new president will do to them.
But when we measure the 44th president’s accomplishments, do we recall where and when he started? Remember what the nation and world were like the day he took office? Imagine what might have been without him?
In his farewell this week, Obama himself cited the advice of Atticus Finch in To Kill a
Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.’’
So go back to the hours before Obama became president. Walk in his shoes, sit in his pew, ride in his limousine. Then, judge. TUESDAY, JAN. 20, 2009, 12:01 A.M. In 12 hours you become president — the first since Roosevelt to enter office in an economic crisis, the first since Richard Nixon to enter office in wartime, the first to enter during both. In your inaugural speech, you call it “the winter of our hardship.”
That’s putting it mildly. “Business is just shutting down,” economist Mark Zandi said. “Everything is going wrong.” He said that a month ago; now, things are worse.
A third of the nation’s lending capacity is frozen, and the value of its housing stock has dropped from $12 trillion to $4.5 trillion in less than three years. The average household has lost a third of its net worth. A trillion dollars in stock values are gone.
Two foreign wars have killed more than 4,800 Americans, strained military families with repeated deployments, and, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report, could wind
up costing $2.4 trillion.
Osama bin Laden, the most wanted man in U.S. history, is still at large. Gay soldiers and sailors are still in the closet.
Newtown and Ferguson are not yet synonyms for catastrophe and conflict. Only capitalists occupy Wall Street. The Tea Party is just the name of an obscure website. The Arab Spring, and the chaos that follows, lie ahead. 7:16 A.M. The sun rises on the capital of a nation of 306 million, 44 million of whom lack health insurance.
Another day, another 8,219 foreclosures filed, 2,373 homes confiscated, 4,658 vehicles repossessed and 16,700 people thrown out of work. At this rate, Americans will buy 17,000 fewer vehicles today than three years ago.
At Blair House, you’ve been up for more than an hour. After a workout you have breakfast with Michelle and the girls.
Yesterday, Homeland Security alerted you to a “credible threat” — four Somalis who have spent time in terrorist camps have slipped into the country from Canada and might be planning an attack at the inauguration. You canceled a speech rehearsal.
At 47, you’re the first president to come of age after the Vietnam War. You have not a gray hair on your head.
You put on a dark suit, white shirt, red tie. You practice your salute.
Five hours from now you will be commander in chief of 179,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. You’ve vowed to get out of the former and straighten out the latter.
But overnight there have been two bombings in Baghdad and an assassination in Mosul. The supply route into Afghanistan through Pakistan, our supposed ally, is so perilous that Gen. David Petraeus is today announcing a new route through Uzbekistan.
You’ve promised to talk with our enemies. But North Korea and Iran are hell-bent on getting nukes; North Korea already has enough material for six warheads. Our embassy in Havana has been closed since before you were born. Your last predecessor to visit Cuba was Calvin Coolidge.
Overseas markets are down. 8:47 A.M. You step into the back of the new presidential limousine for a 90second, two-block ride to St. John’s Church, across from the White House, for the traditional pre-inaugural service.
You slide into the front pew and hear the preacher say: “God always sends the best men into the worst times. The problems are mighty and the solutions are not simple. But you are all fired up, sir, and you are ready to go. And this nation goes with you.”
But maybe not the market. The Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index opens at 849.76, down .36 from Monday’s close.
Despite the crisis, most Americans are excited about the inauguration of the first African-American president and optimistic about a post-racial, post-partisan era in politics. By nearly 6-to-1, Americans surveyed today in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll say they’re more hopeful about the next four years.
The text of your speech says, “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood.” In fact, most people don’t understand how bad the crisis is or how bad it could get.
Even you don’t. You don’t know that unemployment will rise to 10% or that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may hold $2 trillion in substan
dard loans. 9:48 A.M. You leave church and get back in the limo, known as “The Beast.” Even The Beast is a reminder of the crisis. Its maker, General Motors, says that without an infusion of government cash it will be broke in two months; the reorganization plan that’s part of its application for a bailout is due in a month. The head of the autoworkers union calls the deadline “unattainable.”
You ride across the street to the White House for coffee with the president, who greets you at with a hearty, “Sir!’’
The S&P index is down, at 832.57. 10:48 A.M. You and President Bush get into The Beast and ride off down Pennsylvania Avenue. Through the bulletproof glass, you can see sharpshooters on the rooftops. You cannot see the P-3 Orion flying recon above the Mall.
Regulators are sorting the wreckage of banks that failed last week in Berkeley, Ill., and Vancouver, Wash., the first of 140 such institutions that will fail before the year is out.
This is shaping up as the worst inauguration day ever for financial stocks. Bank of New York-Mellon reports that its profit fell almost 95% in the last quarter. The S&P is down, at 827.96. 11:01 A.M. The motorcade arrives at the Capitol. In a holding room, you rehearse the oath of office.
You’re handed a statement to read in case the Somalis’ attack seems imminent. You stick the paper in your pocket without looking at it. 11:42 A.M. You stand alone — head back, eyes closed — in the Capitol doorway, waiting to be announced.
It’s bright and cold — 28 degrees, wind chill 17. But the globe is warming. A government report released four days ago says summer ice cover in the Arctic shrank to a record low in 2007 and was almost as scant last summer. And last week the EPA reported that sea levels on the Mid-Atlantic Coast are rising faster than the global average. 11:45 A.M. Pastor Rick Warren, in his blessing, says, “We celebrate a hinge-point in history.” Aretha Franklin, in a hat with a huge bow, sings My
Country Tis of Thee. A quartet, including Yo Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, plays a John Williams composition that recalls the classic Simple Gifts.
Watching on TV a half a continent away, Eileen Hall tears up. “Oh, a Shaker tune,” she says. “We’ve got some peace people there. My great-grandmother was a Quaker. She would be pleased.”
Hall, 54, is a black resident of Ferguson, Mo., where this year Michael Brown turns 13. 12:05 P.M. With your right hand on the Bible Lincoln used at his first inauguration, you take the oath.
The S&P, which had dipped below 827 at noon, rises to 829.82
In Longmont, Colo., nearly 1,000 people are at the funeral of Sgt. Justin Bauer, 24, killed in Iraq 10 days ago by a roadside bomb. An officer reads comments from Bauer’s men: “Best NCO I ever had,” and “I would have followed that man anywhere.”
A fire engine is ready to take him on a last ride through his hometown. The route goes past Berthoud High School, where Justin played football and met the girl who five months ago became his wife. She recalls him as a model husband and “a son who never gave his family any problems.”
The A&W Root Beer stand marquee says: “Justin Bauer: Gone but not Forgotten.” 12:08 P.M. You begin your speech, “My fellow citizens ...” and someone in the crowd replies, “Yes, sir!” (Again, that word.)
It’s night now in Gaza City. Much of it is dark from weeks of Israeli bombardment. But Israel completed its withdrawal yesterday, and earlier today U.N. Secretary- General Ban Ki Moon toured Gaza and southern Israel. The hospitals say about 1,300 Palestinians are dead, two-fifths of them civilians.
In Syria, there were street protests — against Israel’s invasion of Gaza, not against leader Bashar al-Assad, who quietly encourages such protests. In an interview published yesterday, he expressed hope for the new president and called for the U.S. to withdraw from Iraq.
He should be careful what he wishes for, although at the moment what the world will know as ISIS exists only in embryonic form, the Islamic State of Iraq. 12:13 P.M. You say, “The state of our economy calls for action, bold and swift.”
Our economy, still growing slightly last fall, is now shrinking at an annual rate of 6% — the road to a depression.
As you speak, companies are shutting down or cutting back. Gottschalks, the nation’s largest publicly traded regional department store chain, is going out of business after 104 years. Macy’s is closing 11 stores in nine states and laying off almost 1,000. Ea- ton, a big diversified manufacturer, is announcing the elimination of 5,200 jobs — 6% of its workforce. Even Google is laying off 100 recruiters.
Your proposed solution — $787 billion in government spending — is more than the New Deal but less than your more liberal advisers say is needed.
And it comes on the heels of the $700 billion authorized to save Wall Street from bad loans. “The money will have to be borrowed,” notes an editorial this morning in USA TODAY, “and no one knows the implications of such massive borrowing.’’ 12:27 P.M. As you finish the speech, you look across the Mall toward Lincoln’s statue. But you cannot see the troubles ahead.
You know that today China is complaining about U.S. arms sales to Taiwan. You do not know that the Chinese navy is about to harass the USS Impeccable, a surveillance ship in international waters in the South China Sea.
Bowe Bergdahl is in Alaska with his Army unit, preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. Bradley Manning is in Upstate New York with his unit, ready to go to Iraq.
Edward Snowden is working for the CIA in Geneva as a computer network security specialist, although some officials are starting to suspect him of unauthorized hacking into agency data.
Christopher Stevens is U.S. deputy chief of mission in Tripoli.
12:40 P.M. You leave the stage as the band plays The Stars and Stripes Forever.
The Somali plot turns out to be a false alarm. The day’s biggest security problem will be children separated from their families.
The S&P dropped 3.80 points while you were speaking. At day’s end the index will have fallen 5.3% to 805.22, the worst Inauguration Day performance since World War II.
Alec Young, equity strategist at S&P, is philosophical: “There is only so much one man can do.”