The first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20, 2009, at the West Front of the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The 56th inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in the city, marked the commencement of the first term of Barack Obama as president and Joe Biden as vice president. Based on combined attendance numbers, television viewership, and Internet traffic, it was the most viewed inauguration since that of Ronald Reagan in 1981.
"A New Birth of Freedom", a phrase from the Gettysburg Address, served as the inaugural theme to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of the birth year of President Abraham Lincoln. In his speeches to the crowds, Obama referred to ideals expressed by Lincoln about renewal, continuity, and national unity. Obama mentioned these ideals in his speech to stress the need for shared sacrifice and a new sense of responsibility to answer America's challenges at home and abroad.
Obama and others paid homage to Lincoln in the form of tributes and references during several events, starting with a commemorative train tour from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C., on January 17, 2009. The inaugural events held in Washington from January 18 to 21, 2009, included concerts, a national day of community service on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the swearing-in ceremony, luncheon and parade, inaugural balls, and the interfaith inaugural prayer service. The presidential oath as administered by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts to Obama during his swearing-in ceremony on January 20 strayed slightly from the oath of office prescribed in the United States Constitution, which led to its re‑administration the next day.
In addition to a larger than usual celebrity attendance, the Presidential Inaugural Committee increased its outreach to ordinary citizens to encourage greater participation in inaugural events compared with participation in recent past inaugurations. For the first time, the committee opened the entire length of the National Mall as the public viewing area for the swearing-in ceremony, breaking with the tradition of past inaugurations. Selected American citizens participated in the train tour and other inaugural events. A philanthropist organized a People's Inaugural Ball for disadvantaged people who otherwise could not afford to attend the inaugural festivities. Among the celebrations for the inauguration, the committee hosted a first-ever Neighborhood Inaugural Ball with free or affordable tickets for ordinary citizens.
Context
By definition, the inauguration marked the formal culmination of the presidential transition of Barack Obama that began when he won the United States presidential election on November 4, 2008, and became the president-elect. In accordance with Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution, Obama resigned from the United States Senate effective November 16, 2008. He was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15, 2008. The results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 8, 2009.
Obama, who originally campaigned using the slogan "Change We Can Believe In" and later "Change We Need", was widely celebrated as the first African American president of the United States and a symbol of change from his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. Obama also represented a generational change as the first man elected president who was born in the 1960s. He inherited the 2008 financial crisis, which Peter Orszag termed an "economic mess".
Planning
The inauguration was planned primarily by two committees: the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee. Although the election was scheduled for November 4, 2008, the congressional committee began constructing the inaugural platform on September 24, 2008.
Joint Congressional Committee
The swearing-in ceremony and the inaugural luncheon for President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden were planned by the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, a committee composed of United States Senators Dianne Feinstein, committee chair, Bob Bennett and Harry Reid, and United States Representatives John Boehner, Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi. The committee is overseen by the U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration.
The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies chose the inaugural theme, "A New Birth of Freedom", a phrase from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address from the Civil War era. The theme, which was selected by the committee to mark the inaugural occasion and honor the 200th anniversary year of Lincoln's birth, expressed "Lincoln's hope that the sacrifice of those who died to preserve the United States would lead to 'a new birth of freedom' for the nation." In his reliance on the inaugural theme, Obama wanted "to give Americans reassurance that today, as in Lincoln's time, the country would find its way through any crisis".
The congressional committee released the full schedule of the January 20 inaugural events on December 17, 2008. The inauguration schedule referred to the president‑elect as "Barack H. Obama", although Obama specified previously that he intended to use his full name for his swearing-in ceremony, including his middle name Hussein. Obama decided to use his full name "Barack Hussein Obama" to "follow the tradition, not trying to make a statement one way or the other" for the inaugural ceremony. During the election campaign, Obama's detractors tried to use his middle name to imply falsely that he was a Muslim.
The District of Columbia City Council passed legislation to enable bars and restaurants to stay open around‑the‑clock to provide hospitality services to the inaugural festivities attendees. After reaching an agreement with the congressional committee, District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty signed legislation to temporarily allow bars and restaurants to operate 24 hours during the weekend leading up to the inauguration, but with 4:00 am EST as the cut‑off for alcoholic beverage service. The Hotel Association of Metropolitan Washington agreed to pay for extended train service provided by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority on January 19 to accommodate visitors attending inaugural events and workers providing support for those events.
Presidential Inaugural Committee
The 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee organized several other inauguration‑related events at the direction of the president‑elect and vice president‑elect of the United States, such as the train ride, concerts, parade, balls and prayer service. The co-chairs of the committee were William Daley, Penny Pritzker, John W. Rogers Jr., Patrick Ryan and Julianna Smoot.
For the first time in history, the Presidential Inaugural Committee opened the full length of National Mall, which extends from the United States Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial, as the public viewing area for the swearing-in ceremony. The presidential committee set aside a section of the mall close to the U.S. Capitol for people holding reserved tickets for the inaugural event. The committee directed the opening of the entire National Mall to make the event "'the most open and accessible in history,' allowing those who [could not] get the [reserved] tickets to the swearing-in ceremony on the Capitol grounds to fill the mall". To enable people in attendance to see and hear the swearing-in ceremony, the committee arranged for placement of JumboTrons at points along the entire mall.
Despite criticism that such a large event could not be carbon-friendly, the presidential committee incorporated environment-friendly measures in its planning of the inaugural events. The environmental measures included the use of recyclable carpet for the platform, retrieval of recyclable items from outdoor areas after an event, and the use of recycled paper for invitations and inaugural ball tickets.
Fundraising
The 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee attempted to raise more individual contributions in smaller dollar amounts compared with the second inauguration of George W. Bush in 2005. The 2009 contribution limit was set at $50,000 for donations by individuals, whereas individuals and companies were able to give a maximum of $250,000 apiece for the 2005 event. As of January 30, 2009, the presidential committee raised more than $53 million, with at least 458 people giving the committee-imposed maximum of $50,000, including celebrity donors such as George Soros, Halle Berry, Jamie Foxx and George Lucas. Emphasizing a change from business as usual, the committee set stringent guidelines for campaign contributions, barring donations from corporations, political action committees, registered federal lobbyists, labor and trade unions, registered foreign agents and non-U.S. citizens. The committee did accept donations from people with active lobbying interests before the federal government, but not registered as federal lobbyists, such as Google executive Eric Schmidt and Microsoft executive Steve Ballmer.
Based on its fundraising efforts and crowd estimates for the Obama inauguration, the presidential committee set its budget at $160–$170 million for the inauguration, including about $45 million for the gala events. The federal government contributed about $49 million, including $1.2 million to cover the actual swearing-in ceremony. The District of Columbia and the neighboring states of Maryland and Virginia projected costs to provide support for inaugural events at more than $75 million alone for police, fire and medical services. To help fund the efforts, President George W. Bush declared a federal state of emergency as a precaution so that funds could be sought from Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Invitations and tickets
The Presidential Inaugural Committee and members of the 111th U.S. Congress distributed invitations and color-coded tickets to both dignitaries and ordinary citizens for the reserved sections on or near the U.S. Capitol grounds to view the swearing-in ceremony. Invitations and tickets were sent to ambassadors and chiefs of diplomatic missions to the United States and their spouses, but not to other representatives of foreign countries, and invitations were distributed to U.S. politicians and an array of dignitaries across the spectrum of business and industry. House and Senate congressional members distributed free tickets for the inaugural ceremony to the public by lottery or on a first‑come, first served basis because of overwhelming requests to attend the event.
Because of high demand and limited availability of the reserved tickets, some people planned to offer their tickets for sale through ticket brokers, Internet auctions and classified listing services. Sales offers for tickets reached as high as $1,750 each for the reserved standing room section behind the Capitol Reflecting Pool, $5,500 each for the reserved standing room section in front of the Reflecting Pool and $20,000 each for the VIP section on the Capitol grounds. In one case, a former legislative aide to Representative Ted Poe was exposed by a prospective buyer after the former aide used Craigslist and e‑mail to offer five tickets to the buyer for $4,500.
Federal and state officials became concerned about ticket scalping and fraud related to sales of the tickets for the swearing-in ceremony. Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, introduced legislation in mid-November 2008 to ban sales of tickets to the swearing-in ceremony. At the same time, the joint congressional committee contacted online auction operators, ticket resellers and classified listing services to block sales of the tickets. To address the committee's concerns, StubHub and eBay agreed to ban ticket sales for the swearing-in ceremony on all of its sites. Senator Feinstein re-introduced legislation in December 2008 to ban ticket sales for the swearing-in ceremony after amending the bill to exempt tickets issued by official presidential inaugural committees for inaugural event fundraising. The U.S. Senate failed to pass the final bill, which caused the bill to die in the closing days of the lame duck legislative session.
Pre-inaugural events
Train ride: Commemorating Lincoln
On January 17, 2009, Obama hosted a whistle stop train tour in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth year of Abraham Lincoln. Obama reenacted the final part of Lincoln's 1861 train tour from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C. to capture the mood of the 1861 Springfield to Washington train tour traveled by Lincoln to his own inauguration. For his train ride to the nation's capital, Obama rode in the Georgia 300, a vintage railroad car used by past presidents and the same one he used for touring Pennsylvania during his presidential primary campaign. On the tour, Obama was accompanied by his wife Michelle, who had just turned forty-five on this day, their daughters Malia and Sasha, and a host of friends and guests.
For the train ride to Washington, Obama invited 41 "everyday Americans" that he met during his presidential campaign to accompany him on the tour and attend other inaugural events, including the swearing-in ceremony, the parade and an inaugural ball. The group of citizens who joined the tour had shared stories with then-candidate Obama about themselves and their families during the presidential campaign, and included Matt Kuntz and Lilly Ledbetter. Kuntz, who lost his step‑brother to suicide after returning home from the Gulf War, dedicated his efforts to improve mental health screening for Iraq War veterans. Ledbetter, who learned years later that her employer had discriminated against her in pay based on gender, lost her case before the Supreme Court because she did not file her claim within 180 days of the discriminatory act. Nine days after his inauguration, Obama as president signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, allowing claims filed against employers not only within 180 days of the pay discrimination, but also restarting the 180-day period for claims upon receiving any paycheck based on a discriminatory pay action.