…and President Barack Obama hasn’t wasted any time getting to work:
- President Obama signed executive orders banning gifts from lobbyists to administration officials, prohibiting lobbyists from taking a White House job in an area where they lobbied, and preventing former lobbyists who come to work for the administration from being allowed to lobby the administration after leaving government service.
- The president convened his senior national security and economic teams for separate afternoon meetings.
- He also spent part of the morning on the phone with four Mideast leaders discussing the Gaza conflict.
- The President enacted a pay freeze for senior White House staff making $100,000 or more in light of our nation’s current economic difficulties.
- And did I mention President Obama found time to a take the oath of office again? Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the oath to Obama on Wednesday night at the White House out of what White House counsel Greg Craig called “an abundance of caution.”
There’s also talk that on day 2 of his presidency, President Obama will issue orders to close Guantanamo prison and to overhaul the treatment of terrorism suspects, both of which were promises Obama made during his presidential campaign.
Honest to God he’s done more than Bush did in the last 6 months. When I stop to take in the fact that we have a cerebral President who actually is taking his position seriously I don’t know if I feel more European or if I feel like there’s been a shift in the time continuum where we’ve leapt back to the Jefferson era of big thinking and big actions on behalf of the greater good or ahead to a more civilized nation.
I bet Bush spent his first day spinning around in the chair in the oval office going WHEEEEE
Kay, I don’t have any doubt President Bush took the presidency seriously; I just think he surrounded himself with absolutely the wrong people to take advice from.