At first, for me, the choice was not President Obama, instead it was any Democratic candidate or political party that could replace the GOP led Administration both in our Executive and Legislative branches of Government. This aforementioned feeling is a feeling I’ve carried since our country’s invasion of Iraq.
Starting in June of 2007, I started to occasionally watch the news coverage of the Primaries on cable TV here in Thailand and somewhat following the online newswires on the Internet. By September of 07, I was fully devoted to following every bit of information I could gather on the Democratic candidates and decided upon Governor Bill Richardson as by choice to unseat the GOP’s candidate. In December of hat year I was bitterly disappointed when Governor Richardson withdraw is candidacy.
From that point on I switched to Senator Obama! My only question I had and still have is Obama “a man of substance or a man of words?” He is, as all of us know a fine orator, a man who cannot help us remember the days of Senator Robert Kennedy and former President John Kennedy. By this I mean, he relates to the common needs and desires of the ordinary person like me, in a very articulent and resolving manner; approaching the issue in an academic course of action.
As the Primaries progressed my support for Senator Obama increased, but what I liked most was the response he received from the crowds he spoke to; uniting us Americans and even the international community started getting behind him. Senator Obama was uniting the world with “Hope” and “Change!”
Today, President Obama will become the 44th President of The United States and as all of us know will face issues that the world as either been ignoring over the past eight years or tackle problems generated by the past Administration. In my heart I feel given time by the American people and unselfish trust our congress he can provide us with answers and course of action to make America the country it once was and a nation looked upon as the world leader.
My biggest worry for these coming years and his Administration is: President Obama takes an academic approach to problems, which history as proven this is not always a popular approach during the implementation stages, but is usually the best and most correct strategy. I hope all of us will give him time, support and understanding.
For me during this special day of long awaited celebration; I’ll be at the UK Irish Pub in Chiang Mai tonight at 10:00 PM, watching the Inauguration with my fellow members of and organization I joined last January entitled “Democrats Abroad”. It’s going to be a long and happy night!
Congratulations President Obama!
Obama “As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals!”
Update from Time
I’ve posted this entry before President Obama presents his speech but here what I guess we’re to expect from the President. Following are a few excerpts from the Time article:
Millions of people, hundreds of parties, tens of millions of dollars in security, and in 10 years’ time, if President-elect Barack Obama is lucky, all that most people will likely recall from his inauguration is one sentence. “I was there when Obama said…” they’ll tell their friends.
Obama and his speechwriters know this all too well, and they have surely spent the last several weeks pondering what might be that memorable line, and whether the speech can still be great without one.
He took nearly four months to write that speech in stolen minutes on the Senate campaign trail and late night sessions. By comparison he penned his convention speech in just over a week and his Philadelphia speech on race in just two nights.
This time around Obama began discussions with speechwriter Jon Favreau and adviser David Axelrod the week before Thanksgiving. Favreau, a 27-year-old boy wonder, delivered the first and second drafts to Obama in December. Last weekend, Obama did extensive editing and writing of his own and the text has been edited and discussed by all three since. A running draft pings around cyberspace as the three bounce ideas off one another daily — yet another reason Obama wants to keep his Blackberry.
“The speech will describe the moment we’re in and the spirit required to emerge from this crisis even stronger and more united than before,” said Nick Shapiro, an Obama spokesman.
Excerpts from the Washington Post:
Then President Barack Obama stepped to the lectern, surveyed the uncountable crowd, and delivered his Inaugural Address, his clear, insistent, youthful voice that somehow has the lifting quality of an airplane taking off, winging west toward the Lincoln Memorial and across the country.
Jumbo screens relayed his image to the crowd — images rule now, wisdom has it — and Obama once more had a smooth, cool, minimalist one. But people had come, in a way they haven’t come in a while, not just to see him but to hear him, to listen to his words, to compare his speech with the other speeches that have enthralled audiences since his campaign began.
As much as anything else, Obama won the presidency with words. He is an orator, a rare thing in a time when educated people, a lot of them Obama supporters, have been taught to distrust old-fashioned eloquence. They want text they can deconstruct, the verbal equivalent of spreadsheets; they say they want candidates who talk about “the issues.”
This is an age of media hipness, when we’re virtuosos of data bounced off satellites, when we get weird as wizards, talking on cellphones to electronic ghosts constructed of bandwidths and wavelengths. But Obama has reminded us that none of this modern science has the power of the human animal standing up on two feet and talking — a sort of ritual shouting, actually, even chanting: oratory, probably not much different than the way it was done by the Old Ones in the forest primeval. We’re not used to this. People call it “preternatural.”
And finally excerpts from the AP Online News Wire Service really proving video coverage as come of age:
Like never before, inauguration experienced online
Jan 21, 7:28 AM ESTNEW YORK (AP) — In an inauguration defined by a sense of change, the experience of watching Barack Obama take office was fittingly revolutionary.
Like never before, Americans watched the inauguration of an incoming president online through live video streaming across their computers. And wholly wrapped up in following Inauguration Day 2009 on the Web was reacting to them – blogging, vlogging and tweeting.
The major news portals – Yahoo.com, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, AOL News, The New York Times, ABC.com, CBS.com, Fox.com, WashingtonPost.com – all streamed the festivities, some with video embedded right on their home page for the first time.
Update:
A surprising update from AP Online Newswire Service:
Jan 21, 8:48 PM EST
Obama takes presidential oath again after stumble
WASHINGTON (AP) — After the flub heard around the world, President Barack Obama has taken the oath of office. Again. Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House – a rare do-over. The surprise moment came in response to Tuesday’s much-noticed stumble, when Roberts got the words of the oath a little off, which prompted Obama to do so, too.
Don’t worry, the White House says: Obama has still been president since noon on Inauguration Day.
Our Country in Change 