“I surprised myself by turning to him and saying, ‘Thank you. Thanks for the chance, the chance to continue to serve.'”
— Vice President Joe Biden, quoted by the Washington Post, recounting what he said to President Obama as they left the inaugural platform.
Dan Balz: “President Obama has never lacked for confidence, but rarely has that attribute been on display as clearly as on Monday in an inaugural address that underscored the distance he has traveled after four contentious years in office. This was not the politician who campaigned in 2008 on themes of transcending the divisive politics of the past, though there were ritual calls for the country and its political leaders to seize this moment together. Instead, it was a president who has accepted the reality of those divisions and is determined to prevail on his terms.”
Ezra Klein: “In 2009, Barack Obama came to change Washington. Today’s speech showed how much Washington has changed him.”
A new Smart Politics report finds that nearly 40% of U.S. Representatives serve in districts outside of their birth state.
Key findings: 62.4% of lawmakers currently serving in the House represent districts in their birth state — 270 of 433 non-vacant seats — with 37.6% born elsewhere.
Despite the increased opportunities of mobility of the population over the decades, it is actually the younger lawmakers serving in the 113th Congress who are most likely to represent a district in the state of their birth at 69.8% for those born in the 1970s and 1980s. That number falls to 64.6% for those born in the 1960s, 61.4% for the 1950s, 59.6% for the 1940s, and 54.2% for the 1920s and 1930s.
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A new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds that a majority of Americans – for the first time – believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
“According to the poll, 54 percent of adults say that abortion should be legal either always or most of the time, while a combined 44 percent said it should be illegal – either with or without exceptions.”
“In addition, a whopping 70 percent of Americans oppose the Roe v. Wade decision being overturned, including 57 percent who feel strongly about this.”
Republicans in the Virginia Senate today “pushed through a surprise rewrite of the 2011 redistricting plan that erases a Democratic seat in western Virginia,” the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
The revised plan cleared the Senate on a party-line vote of 20-19 as Sen. Henry Marsh (D), a 79-year old civil rights veteran, was attending President Obama’s inauguration ceremony.
Democrats “were shocked by the move, vowing to oppose the new plan in court.”
“It was a fine speech, but I didn’t hear any conciliatory remarks. I didn’t see any specific reference like, ‘I reach out my hand to the other side of the aisle.'”
— Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), quoted by the New York Times, on President Obama’s second inaugural address.
Mitt Romney spent Inauguration Day at his home in La Jolla, CA, and had “no big plans,” NBC News reports.
Asked if Romney was likely to watch the inaugural ceremonies today, an aide said, “Doubtful.”
Dan Amira notes it’s the first time since 1997 that a presidential runner-up didn’t attend his opponent’s inauguration ceremony.
Bloomberg reports President Obama and his family arrived at St. John’s at 8:35 am ET and the service ended at 9:39.
Obama personally sent this tweet at 9:25:
I’m honored and grateful that we have a chance to finish what we started. Our work begins today. Let’s go. -bo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 21, 2013
Andrew Sullivan: “If you have long believed, as I have, that this man could easily become the liberal Reagan by the end of his second term… then this speech will not have surprised you.”
James Fallows: “I was expecting an anodyne tone-poem about healing national wounds,
surmounting partisanship, and so on. As has often been the case, Obama
confounded expectations — mine, at least. Four years ago, when people
were expecting a barn-burner, the newly inaugurated president Obama gave
a deliberately downbeat, sober-toned presentation about the long
challenges ahead. Now — well, it’s almost as if he has won re-election
and knows he will never have to run again and hears the clock ticking on
his last chance to say what he cares about. If anyone were wondering
whether Obama wanted to lower expectations for his second term … no,
he apparently does not.”
Ezra Klein: “In his first term, Obama changed policy. In his second, he wants to change minds.”
Chris Cillizza: “This was a speech that could only be given by someone who knew that he would never have to run for re-election again… This was Obama unbound. Distill Obama’s speech to a single sentence and that sentence is: ‘I’m the president, deal with it.'”
Ta-Nehisi Coates: “There was a time when merely stating the ideas Obama put forth would have gotten you killed.”
E.J. Dionne: “Some will no doubt think (and write) that Obama should have sought more
lofty and non-partisan ground. The problem with this critique is that it
asks Obama to speak as if the last four years had not happened.”
Greg Sargent: “Today, Obama all but declared ideological victory.”
Matthew Continetti: “It is of course possible that the inauguration of a reelected president is his moment of maximum triumph. It is of course possible that Obama’s second term may turn out like George W. Bush’s, when the lyricism and passion of the second inaugural collided with the realities of strategic miscalculations and unexpected events. I have my doubts. What I do not doubt is that the generation of conservatives and Republicans who return one day to power will be forced to reckon with the consequences of the Obama revolution, just as a generation of defeated liberals were forced to confront and in some cases accept the revolution of Ronald Reagan.”
Here is the full text of President Obama’s second inaugural address on Jan. 21, 2013, as prepared for delivery:
Vice President Biden, Mr. Chief Justice, Members of the United States Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens:
Each time we gather to inaugurate a president, we bear witness to the
enduring strength of our Constitution. We affirm the promise of our
democracy. We recall that what binds this nation together is not the
colors of our skin or the tenets of our faith or the origins of our
names. What makes us exceptional – what makes us American – is our
allegiance to an idea, articulated in a declaration made more than two
centuries ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.”
In the middle of the inaugural festivities, Republican officials confirm the House will vote Wednesday “on an increase in the nation’s debt limit, a move designed to prevent a first-ever government default,” the AP reports.
“The vote marks a change in strategy for House Republicans who run the chamber and who remain adamant about reducing government spending but decided not to use the debt limit to trigger a confrontation with President Barack Obama.”
“You didn’t mess up.”
— Sasha Obama, quoted by NBC News, whispering to her father after he took the oath of office yesterday.
White House adviser David Plouffe told ABC News that despite
Republican warnings that the tax debate is over, President Obama would
not accept a budget deal without additional revenue.
Said Plouffe: “We are goiing to require some more revenues. John Boehner himself said he thought there was $800 billion in revenue from closing loopholes. We’ve dealt with the tax rate issue. Now it’s about loopholes.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) had the same message on Meet the Press: “We’re going to do a
budget this year, and it’s going to have revenues in it. And our
Republican colleagues better get used to that fact.”
President Obama’s public swearing-in ceremony begins at 11:30 am ET today. He officially started his second term yesterday with a private ceremony.
First Read: “Looking back at some of the most recent second inaugural addresses, they’ve typically been a continuation of that president’s first-term message (and re-election theme). For Bill Clinton, it was preparing the country for the 21st Century. For George W. Bush, it was security and freedom. And if that continuation theme is any guide, expect Obama to talk A LOT about rebuilding the middle class. After all, it was the central theme of his re-election campaign.”
Associated Press: “Inaugural addresses are not typically partisan, and White House aides
say Obama doesn’t intend to call out his political opponents. But they
say he will stand up for his values and vision that were supported by
the majority of voters in the November election. Obama’s prepared text
notes that spirited debate is a hallmark of a vibrant democracy, aides
say, but that the country’s leaders can’t let disagreement prevent them
from finding common ground to move the country forward. The president
also plans to encourage Americans to continue making their voices heard
to shape the debate as policy is made, aides said.”
Carrie Dann: “From drunken speeches to dead canaries, a guide to our quirky inaugural history.”
The New York Times notes that New Hampshire Gov. Maggie Hassan (D) was among the people to join Vice President Joe Biden, his family and close
political associates at the vice president’s residence for his official
swearing-in ceremony yesterday. And the night before, Biden attended a
pre-inaugural party of Democrats from Iowa.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal notes Biden “is expected to visit a Latino inaugural ball on Sunday
night at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, reaching
out to a fast-growing constituency that helped the Obama-Biden ticket
win in 2008 and again last year. For his swearing-in earlier in the day,
Mr. Biden selected Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Hispanic
heritage, to administer the oath of office.”
First Read: “The governor of New Hampshire? Partying with Iowa Democrats? Hmmmmmm….
In all seriousness, he’s been carefully laying the groundwork with Iowa
and New Hampshire Democrats for months. Throughout the re-election, he
was keeping tabs on those key early states, congratulating winners
there, etc. Sitting VPs may be Jay Leno punching bags, but they are
familiar to activists.”
Though Obama re-election campaign manager Jim Messina will stay on as the unpaid national chair of “Organizing for Action” — the campaign-turned-advocacy group — he won’t be involved in the operation’s nuts and bolts, BuzzFeed reports.
“Messina’s next big move — after
managing the biggest presidential campaign in the history of politics —
seems as much a mystery to him as it does to his friends and political
observers. He says that what he told the Montanan in 2009 — that
he’d die running campaigns — still stands, but yet he readily admits
that can’t see himself managing a congressional or gubernatorial race,
or even another presidential race. Not in the near future, at least. And
the most political of political staffers say he hasn’t quite figured
out that next move.”
David Maraniss:
“Even now, on Day 1,460 of his presidency, the question persists: Who
is he, really? There is a common refrain that Obama seems elusive, if
not mysterious; less easily categorized and understood than the last
Democratic president. Bill Clinton’s traits were so extra-large and
variegated, for better and worse, that something in him seemed to
connect to almost anybody and anything. No doubt Obama is a different
breed of cat. Aspects of his political personality are less vivid than
Clinton’s. But he is not overly elusive. His mystery is hiding in plain
sight. There is a pattern to his behavior, just as there was with
Clinton. Where Clinton was protean, Obama is more slowly evolving.
People tend to forget, or underestimate, that he had scant executive
experience before becoming president. Behind his veneer of ultra-cool
control he was struggling to figure things out. Now, after four years,
his presidential identity has started to approach its full shape, which
will become clearer from now to 2016.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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