NY Daily News: First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama stand by their brand, J. Crew
By AMY DILUNA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, January 20th 2009

Budding style stars Malia and Sasha Obama are proving to be fashion loyalists. For the past two days, the girls have worn head-to-toe outfits from Crewcuts, the kids line from J.Crew that boasts "designer details" and couture touches on its mini-me separates.

The First Daughters chose bright hues for Dad's inauguration: Malia, 10, in periwinkle blue with a coral dress, and Sasha, 7, in a guava coat with an orange scarf and gloves. Shoppers can pick up highlights from the custom-made outfits in the Fall 2009 line.

Party dresses from the pint-size preppie line run $158-$248 in sophisticated fabrics like silk taffeta and jacquard. Party shoes are $95-$128.

The kids have worn Crewcuts before, too. For Sunday's Lincoln Memorial celebration, they picked cream and white coats. For the Kids Inaugural Ball Monday, their mom picked the brand, too.

The retail chain posted a "Congratulations to the First Family" message on its Web site Tuesday afternoon, obviously grateful for its newest high-profile fans.

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/fashi...


First daughters Malia and Sasha Obama chose J. Crew for their Dad's big day.

WP political blog, "The Fix," by Chris Cillizza
Obama's Inauguration Speech: First Thoughts

....• Somber and Serious: Obama's address was almost entirely free of campaign style rhetoric or obvious applause lines. Its seriousness of tone contrasted sharply with the mood of the masses gathered to hear it; in the run up to the inauguration chants of "Obama" rang through the crowd and even afterward the crowd was in a feisty mood -- offering mock cheers and waving goodbye as former President George W. Bush flew overhead in a helicopter. Not so Obama, who, right from the start of his speech made clear that this was no partisan address; he talked of "gathering clouds and raging storms" and the need at a time as dire as this one for all Americans to do their part to make the nation great again.

• Grounded in History: Not surprisingly given the President's interest in past men who have held the office, the speech was grounded heavily in the series of historical events that led to a black man named Barack Obama to be sworn in as the nation's 44th president. "For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life," said Obama. "For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth. For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn." The rhetoric was powerful -- one of Obama's best moments in a speech that was as workmanlike as it was soaring; it ably connected the struggles and triumphs of the past to the struggles and triumphs of today and beyond.

• A Break from the Past: While Obama's speech was not the sort of red-meat that some of the partisans in the crowd might have wanted, he made clear that the next four years would not be like the last eight. That break was particularly pronounced when Obama spoke of the nation's "common defense" -- an area where many liberals, moderates and even some conservatives believe Bush took the country off on a very wrong track. "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama intoned to cheers, adding shortly after: "To all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

• Race Matters: Obama made clear from his very first days as a candidate that he was someone running for president who happened to be black not a black man running for president. But, in the speech today, Obama acknowledged how far African Americans had come in the country with one poignant line. "This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath." Powerful stuff.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/20...

Source: CNN

In keeping with the theme that swept President Obama into the Oval Office, change has come to the official White House Web site.

Almost at the instant Obama was sworn in, www.whitehouse.gov relaunched with a redesign to signal a new era in government. Gone was the staid site of the Bush White House, replaced by a dynamic new site reflective of his tech-savvy successor.

The new design includes more interactive features, a prominent photo gallery displayed across the top of the site, the ability to get e-mail updates, and a White House blog. The site's "briefing room" also includes places for a weekly video address, slide shows, proclamations, and executive orders as well as news about nominations and appointments.

"It's a great first step, and the tip of the iceberg in what's coming with participatory politics and the relationship between the president and the public," said Andrew Rasiej, founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and co-founder of techPresident.com.

Visitors to the site are invited to e-mail the president and his staff, although -- perhaps in a nod to the Twittersphere, where brevity is key -- comments are limited to 500 characters.

"President Obama is committed to creating the most open and accessible administration in American history," states the site's Contact Us page....


President Obama's official White House Web site launched during his swearing-in ceremony.

Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/whi...

NYT: January 20, 2009
Man in a Hurry
Timothy Egan

He seemed to stumble, just for an instant, in the gallop to get over the threshold during the transfer of power, after Chief Justice Roberts flubbed the words of the most powerful paragraph in the land. Taking the oath of office on Lincoln’s leather-bound bible, in a capital partially built by slaves, Barack Obama was a man in a hurry in an hour of peril. In that spirit, he was a man who had already memorized a few lines that another had not.

Thus, he moved quickly, in an 18-minute speech, to the theme that will carry or break the new president: sacrifice. The easy, the lazy, the days of quick riches and shortcuts, of excuses personal and political – over, he declared.

All great speeches, in their essence, are big stories, crafting an American narrative. “We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” as Joan Didion said. And to govern. As a writer and creator of a family narrative that allowed him to live with a unique background, Obama knows this. So there was no laundry list of policies to come. And almost no mention of that most overused of personal pronouns – I....

His very presence – that of “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath” – was the most obvious of the stories told on this inauguration day.

The stories that ran through speech were ones that that led up to this day: people who crossed an ocean, bled in the snow, toiled in sweatshops, labored in anonymity to make something with their hands, stories that families tell in passing on their own mythologies.

From George Washington, he borrowed the message sent to a band of shivering rebels on a winter day, when a cause seemed lost.

From Franklin Roosevelt, he borrowed a rebuke of those who brought the nation to its knees, economically, and a call to acknowledge the obvious in the bad days that surround us....

***

We all look for a story to inhabit, a summons. Obama gave us that summons — “the price and promise of citizenship” – in which there will be no free rides. But also gave us the story, his very presence, the living, breathing blueprint for the new politics of possibility.

http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/m... /

LAT: Michelle Obama's inauguration wardrobe reviewed
Booth Moore

Just as President Barack Obama turned the page on American history Tuesday in Washington, First Lady Michelle Obama is turning the page on American design. The lacy lemon-grass ensemble she chose for the swearing-in ceremony wasn’t by one of the aging custodians of the 7th Avenue Establishment, Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan or Calvin Klein. It was by Isabel Toledo, a Cuban American nobody knows but everyone should.

By wearing clothes by up-and-coming designers such as Thakoon, Maria Pinto and Toledo, Obama is helping to promote a new generation of talent, and write the next chapter in American fashion.

Toledo, who sells at Barneys New York, has been designing under her own name for 20 years in New York, and was briefly creative director for Anne Klein. (Bet they wish they'd hung onto her now!) She is married to fashion illustrator Ruben Toledo. “She’s never been about making clothes to make herself famous,” says Rosemary Brantley, founding chairwoman of the Fashion Department at L.A.’s Otis School of Art and Design, where Toledo has been teaching since the 1990s. “She’s about flattering the figure and she’s curvaceous herself.”

With its retro “Mad Men” silhouette and trendy yellow hue, the dress and coat proved that Obama can strike a balance between being conservative and taking risks. She looks better wearing one color, rather than breaking up her tall frame as she did on election night with the black-and-red Narciso Rodriguez dress.

Some might think that the inauguration ensemble was a tad dressy with its beaded collar. But Obama likes to dress up, and she’s determined to play her part in promoting fashion as fantasy. She may also have raised a few eyebrows with those borrowed $17,000 Loree Rodkin diamond chandelier drop earrings she wore to the “We Are One” concert over the weekend. After all, Nancy Reagan was skewered for borrowing clothes from Bill Blass, James Galanos and others. But that was before the red carpet became the runway, and lending became a key form of advertising for designers.

Besides, Obama knows how to do the high-low thing. She wore J. Crew for the Kid’s Inaugural Ball on Monday night. And just hours after the inauguration, the e-mails were already flooding in from Dress Barn, Bluefly and other retailers about how to get the look for less.

Because fashion is a business and Michelle Obama means business.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage...

TIME: Barack Obama's Inaugural Address: Humility, Gratitude, Sacrifice
By Nancy Gibbs Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009

Humility, gratitude and sacrifice. From his first words, Barack Obama let us know that even on a day so bright he was not blinded. Not by the cloud of witnesses in front of him. Not by the lights of cameras sending his words across the planet. That he was willing to sound so somber on his day of celebration tells us many things at once. At a time of scarcity, do not waste opportunities. When the world is watching and willing to follow, tell them where you want to take them. And above all tell the truth.

"That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood," he said, and yet he reminded us how deep it was, not only with war and loss and economic decline, but with doubt and dread and a "nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights."

And yet it was by confronting so clearly all that frightens and threatens us that Obama could issue his challenge. "In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given," he said. "It must be earned." To do that, he said, America must dismiss the cynical, resist the easy but futile fix, "reform bad habits and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."

He offered to the world a similar prospect: "Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more."

And then he brought it all together, the challenge and the duty and the promise: "What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task."...

***

The entire nation, it seemed, had shown up this morning, wrapped against the cold, turning the Mall into a vast red sea. You could almost pity the pundits as they groped for extravagant new ways to say what didn't need to be said in the first place. Historic? The monuments themselves seemed to lean in for a better view. There were the Tuskegee Airmen and the mighty of Motown, the past Presidents (like a live-action Mount Rushmore) and the whole of America in miniature, as though the continent folded in on itself and poured 300 million people into one space, one time, to stop and listen and then start over together.

What brought them to Washington, on flights that turned into airborne pep rallies, on buses that left at midnight, on foot from the four corners of a city on lockdown?...

And so they could all say they were there, to stand together and glimpse a man in the very far distance accept the full weight of their hopes. That, in the end, is the source of Obama's power....

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,...

CNN: President Obama's Inaugural Address



My fellow citizens:

I stand here today humbled by the task before us, grateful for the trust you have bestowed, mindful of the sacrifices borne by our ancestors. I thank President Bush for his service to our nation, as well as the generosity and cooperation he has shown throughout this transition.

Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Yet, every so often, the oath is taken amidst gathering clouds and raging storms. At these moments, America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forebearers, and true to our founding documents.

So it has been. So it must be with this generation of Americans.

That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age. Homes have been lost; jobs shed; businesses shuttered. Our health care is too costly; our schools fail too many; and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.

These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable but no less profound is a sapping of confidence across our land -- a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable, and that the next generation must lower its sights.

Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America: They will be met.

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.

On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.

We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the fainthearted -- for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.

For us, they packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life.

For us, they toiled in sweatshops and settled the West; endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth.

For us, they fought and died, in places like Concord and Gettysburg; Normandy and Khe Sahn.

Time and again, these men and women struggled and sacrificed and worked till their hands were raw so that we might live a better life. They saw America as bigger than the sum of our individual ambitions; greater than all the differences of birth or wealth or faction.

This is the journey we continue today. We remain the most prosperous, powerful nation on Earth. Our workers are no less productive than when this crisis began. Our minds are no less inventive, our goods and services no less needed than they were last week or last month or last year. Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions -- that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.

For everywhere we look, there is work to be done. The state of the economy calls for action, bold and swift, and we will act -- not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth. We will build the roads and bridges, the electric grids and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together. We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. And all this we will do.

Now, there are some who question the scale of our ambitions -- who suggest that our system cannot tolerate too many big plans. Their memories are short. For they have forgotten what this country has already done; what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage.

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them -- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.

Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control -- and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous. The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.

As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: Know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.

We are the keepers of this legacy. Guided by these principles once more, we can meet those new threats that demand even greater effort -- even greater cooperation and understanding between nations. We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. With old friends and former foes, we will work tirelessly to lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the specter of a warming planet. We will not apologize for our way of life, nor will we waver in its defense, and for those who seek to advance their aims by inducing terror and slaughtering innocents, we say to you now that our spirit is stronger and cannot be broken; you cannot outlast us, and we will defeat you.

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect. To those leaders around the globe who seek to sow conflict, or blame their society's ills on the West: Know that your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy. To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history; but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

As we consider the road that unfolds before us, we remember with humble gratitude those brave Americans who, at this very hour, patrol far-off deserts and distant mountains. They have something to tell us today, just as the fallen heroes who lie in Arlington whisper through the ages. We honor them not only because they are guardians of our liberty, but because they embody the spirit of service; a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves. And yet, at this moment -- a moment that will define a generation -- it is precisely this spirit that must inhabit us all.

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter's courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent's willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

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. 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. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed -- why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have traveled. In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

"Let it be told to the future world ... that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive... that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet ."

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested, we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back, nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/oba...

Barack Obama Essay: Martin Luther King Day
SPECIAL TO THE WASHINGTON TIMES
January 19, 2009


(Media Bistro)

On the day of the first inauguration to take place in this city, a small band of citizens gathered to watch Thomas Jefferson assume office. Our young and fragile democracy had barely finished a long and contentious election that tested our founding ideals, and there were those who feared our union might not endure. It was a perilous moment. But Jefferson announced that while we may differ in opinion, we all share the same principles. "Let us, then, fellow citizens, unite with one heart and one mind," he said, urging those assembled to begin anew the work of building a nation.

In the more than two centuries since, inaugurations have taken place during times of war and peace, depression and prosperity. Beneath the unfinished dome of the Capitol, a young lawyer from Illinois swore an oath to defend the Constitution a divided nation threatened to tear apart. In an era of unprecedented crisis, an optimistic New Yorker refused to allow us to succumb to fear. In a time of great change, a young man from Massachusetts convinced us to think anew with regard to serving our fellow man.

At each and every moment, the American people have joined with one heart and one mind - not just to commemorate a new president, but to celebrate those common ideals, share our hopes for a brighter future and resolve to advance our bold experiment. Tomorrow, we'll gather at a new time of great challenge for the American people. Our nation is at war. Our economy is in turmoil. We have much work to do toward restoring prosperity and renewing the promise of this nation.

And yet while our problems may be new, what is required to overcome them is not. What is required is the same perseverance and idealism that our Founders displayed. What is also required is that we break free from rigid ideology and small thinking, and together grab hold of this opportunity to bridge partisan divides and deliver change for the American people. The state of our union and challenges of a new century demand that we move beyond the old debates and stale arguments. We must focus today not on the dogmas of left and right, but on practical answers to the difficult problems of our times....

***

We will couple the spirit of this inauguration with the celebration of the life of a preacher who once stood and shared his dream for America on the very mall where we'll gather tomorrow....

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/1...

Financial Times: Power switch
By Our Washington Staff
January 19 2009

A new occupant in the White House is always a harbinger of change in Washington, this election made all the more visible with a 47-year-old African-American from Chicago taking over from a 62-year-old white Texan. Barack Obama’s team reflects the change too. They are younger, more diverse, more tech savvy and geographically distinct from those they replace.

Our interactive graphic profiles the new players in Washington and shows their connections – whether through Capitol Hill, Chicago, University, or the Clinton administration.

(NOTE: Check out the interactive graphic at the link.)

But it’s not just the faces that are changing at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The Obama-led White House may be more crowded: So much time are staffers expected to be spending at the White House that Obama officials are already exploring ways in which their families can regularly visit them.

Grassroots campaign rhetoric aside, Mr Obama is likely to take a top down approach to implementing a more grueling schedule for his team. Mr Bush was usually in bed by 10pm and only rarely accepted invitations to dinner outside of the White House, but Mr Obama is a regular night bird. His staff will have to get used to a diet of evening meetings as well as the usual murderously early morning start. And Sunday may turn into a working day as well. Unlike Mr Bush, who had six weekly intelligence briefings a week, Mr Obama has been receiving seven.

More broadly, Washington’s power will switch from conservative to liberal and become younger. Many of the incoming 3,300 presidential appointees will be in their twenties or thirties and hail from Ivy League universities.

And unlike the Bush crowd’s Southern tilt, many of Obama’s team will be from America’s derided ‘elite’ East or West coasts. The same may apply to the hundreds of students or young postgraduates filling the much-coveted internships across the administration. Under Mr Bush, many interns were fervent Christians from Regent University and Liberty University in Virginia, in spite of those institutions’ relatively less than top-flight academic reputations....

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a23bf7b4-e65f-11...

WP political blog, "The Fix," by Chris Cillizza
Obama's Opportunity

When Barack Obama is sworn in as the nation's 44th president tomorrow at noon, he will inherit a country in the midst of a financial crisis of seemingly limitless proportions, a nation seeking to come to grips with its proper role in the world, and a series of international conflicts from Iraq to Israel. All told, it represents the greatest political opportunity any president has had to fundamentally reshape the county at home and abroad in modern history.

Why?

Great crisis -- and it's hard to argue America is in anything but such a situation these days -- calls for great action, sweeping, elemental changes that in times of less turmoil would never pass muster. Obama clearly grasps this odd sort of mandate -- a message from the American people to do something, anything to change the direction of the country -- and sees himself in the mold of the most transformational presidents, most notably Abraham Lincoln.

"We have kicked this can down the road," Obama said in an interview with Post editors and reporters last week. "We are now at the end of the road."

That sense that urgent action is required commingles in Obama with a distinct confidence (his detractors describe it as arrogance) that he is the kind of person who can bend the political system -- and the history of partisan politics -- to his will in order to tackle massive problems ranging from the recent economic collapse to needed reforms in long-standing entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

"I set the tone," Obama said last week in response to a question about his Administration's ability to peacefully coexist despite a gaggle of oversized egos and a management structure that some have criticized as duplicative. "If the tone is set that we bring as much intellectual firepower to a problem...that we make decisions based on facts and evidence then people will adapt to that culture," the president-elect insisted.

Recent polling suggests Obama will have the opportunity and, perhaps more importantly, the time to do big things....

***

Politics is a fickle game. To date, Obama has played it as well as any politician could. And, he is putting down a big bet that the public's desire for change will overcome its hesitancy about seismic changes in the way government works in daily life. "I hope to model a way of interacting with people who are not like you and who don't agree with you that changes the temper of politics," said Obama.

That's a huge task. But, out of great crisis comes great opportunity.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/20...

WP: Restless Searcher on an Improbable Path
By David Maraniss
The Washington Post
Sunday, January 18, 2009

....There is improbability in the making of any president, some more than others, none comparable to Obama. From Lincoln to Truman to Clinton, the cast of American presidents who came out of nowhere, with no connections, is as conspicuous as the well-born lineage of Adams and Roosevelt and Bush. And there were some intimations of fame, real or imagined, along the way with Obama, dating to his toddler days in Honolulu when his grandfather told camera-toting tourists that the chubby, tan little boy at his side was the progeny of a great Hawaiian king. In later years, men of a more serious mien, from the constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe at Harvard to the federal judge Abner Mikva in Chicago, were sufficiently impressed to proclaim that young Obama had the wherewithal to become the first black president.

But it is common to find bits of predictive bread along the trail of a prominent life when retracing it. Who knows how many sure-bet future national leaders have slid instead into anonymous careers? In the 47 years since he was born in Hawaii to a white teenage mother and a black African father, as distant from the White House figuratively and physically as it is possible to get in the United States, the Obama story has unfolded as a triptych of the unlikely. The biography of his family, the sociology of his skin color and the geography of his political rise -- these three panels of his story combined to make the end result all the more vivid, if implausible.

The first president to enter the White House with a literate and introspective memoir behind him, Obama is his own book of firsts. He is the first president with a foreign father. He is the first president to grow up in Hawaii, the 50th state. He is the first president whose parents earned doctoral degrees. He is the first president who once could speak the Indonesian language. He is the first president who was president of the Harvard Law Review. He is the first president who was a hapa, as they are called in Hawaii, with parents of different races. He is the first president who has a sister from Asia and a sister from Africa and a wife from the black working-class South Side of Chicago. And he is the first African American president, yet one with no slaves but a few slaveholders in his ancestry.

Obama is the creation of restlessness, searching, odd connections. He springs out of this wide world, defined by disparate locations that together enfold many of the central themes and movements of modern times.

His father comes out of Kenya as it struggles through anticolonialism toward freedom and the promise and disappointments of a new Africa. His mother comes out of a Seattle suburb at a time when education and global optimism are the twin gods of postwar America's liberal middle class. His parents connect briefly in remote Hawaii, where East meets West, the world's future in redefining race. His mother becomes obsessed with Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, a vibrant and dangerous clash of old and new cultures, testing the rights of women and of individuals in an authoritarian state....

The traits that might define President Obama arise from this history: his blend of idealism and pragmatism, his intellectualism and ego, his calm aggressiveness and seeming lack of neediness, his determination not to be boxed in, his open-minded guardedness and aversion to naiveté, his capacity to view himself from outside as a character in his own story, alternately dramatic and ironic. Coming of age as a "mutt like me," as he said at the first news conference after his election, at once set him apart, making his journey often a lonely one while also making him seem accessible to the world.

It is a modern-day version of the classical odyssey, leaving home for a long journey in search of home....

***

On Tuesday, a quarter-century after his first glimpse of the White House, he will retrace the route from the U.S. Capitol west along Pennsylvania Avenue, this time ensconced in the back of a presidential limousine, the whole world watching, as he glides toward his new home.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...

LAT: Michelle Obama chooses L.A. jeweler Loree Rodkin
Booth Moore

Something old, something new, something borrowed ... Michelle Obama chose some pricey diamond chandelier earrings by local jeweler Loree Rodkin to accent the camel and black Narciso Rodriguez skirt and coat she wore to the "We Are One" concert Sunday in Washington. Obama apparently borrowed the earrings, valued at more than $17,000, from Ikram Goldman, the Chicago retailer who has been helping with her wardrobe over the last few months....

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage...


Earrings (LAT/Loree Rodkin)


(AFP)

NYT: From Books, New President Found Voice
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Published: January 18, 2009

WASHINGTON — In college, as he was getting involved in protests against the apartheid government in South Africa, Barack Obama noticed, he has written, “that people had begun to listen to my opinions.” Words, the young Mr. Obama realized, had the power “to transform”: “with the right words everything could change -— South Africa, the lives of ghetto kids just a few miles away, my own tenuous place in the world.”

Much has been made of Mr. Obama’s eloquence — his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.

Mr. Obama’s first book, “Dreams From My Father” (which surely stands as the most evocative, lyrical and candid autobiography written by a future president), suggests that throughout his life he has turned to books as a way of acquiring insights and information from others — as a means of breaking out of the bubble of self-hood and, more recently, the bubble of power and fame. He recalls that he read James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright and W. E. B. Du Bois when he was an adolescent in an effort to come to terms with his racial identity and that later, during an ascetic phase in college, he immersed himself in the works of thinkers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine in a spiritual-intellectual search to figure out what he truly believed.

As a boy growing up in Indonesia, Mr. Obama learned about the American civil rights movement through books his mother gave him. Later, as a fledgling community organizer in Chicago, he found inspiration in “Parting the Waters,” the first installment of Taylor Branch’s multivolume biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

More recently, books have supplied Mr. Obama with some concrete ideas about governance: it’s been widely reported that “Team of Rivals,” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book about Abraham Lincoln’s decision to include former opponents in his cabinet, informed Mr. Obama’s decision to name his chief Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as Secretary of State. In other cases, books about F. D. R.’s first hundred days in office and Steve Coll’s “Ghost Wars,“ about Afghanistan and the C.I.A., have provided useful background material on some of the myriad challenges Mr. Obama will face upon taking office....

***

As Fred Kaplan’s illuminating new biography (“Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer”) makes clear, Lincoln, like Mr. Obama, was a lifelong lover of books, indelibly shaped by his reading — most notably, in his case, the Bible and Shakespeare — which honed his poetic sense of language and his philosophical view of the world. Both men employ a densely allusive prose, richly embedded with the fruit of their reading, and both use language as a tool by which to explore and define themselves. Eventually in Lincoln’s case, Mr. Kaplan notes, “the tool, the toolmaker, and the tool user became inseparably one. He became what his language made him.”

The incandescent power of Lincoln’s language, its resonance and rhythmic cadences, as well as his ability to shift gears between the magisterial and the down-to-earth, has been a model for Mr. Obama — who has said he frequently rereads Lincoln for inspiration — and so, too, have been the uses to which Lincoln put his superior language skills: to goad Americans to complete the unfinished work of the founders, and to galvanize a nation reeling from hard times with a new vision of reconciliation and hope.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/19/books/19...

LAT: Michelle Obama Chooses Narciso Rodriguez Again
Booth Moore

Undeterred by the stir caused by her red-and-black Narciso Rodriguez election night dress, Michelle Obama chose to wear a camel-and-black color-block coat and skirt by the New York designer for the "We Are One" concert in Washington today. The graphic style made her stand out against the marble edifice as she and Barack Obama descended the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She looked strong, elegant and above all modern.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/alltherage...