Four years after scripting history by becoming America’s first black President, Barack Obama today began his second innings at the White House after being ceremonially sworn in as the US President with budget troubles, gun control and immigration issues lurking ahead.
Standing before a crowd of thousands braving the chill at the iconic white-domed Capitol building draped in stripes, Obama renewed his oath of office for the second day in a row at the 57th inauguration ceremony of an American President.
51-year-old Obama was sworn in for a second four-year term today by the Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at the grand ceremony attended by his family, Congressmen, friends and staff and tens of thousands of people.
Obama was officially sworn in yesterday as per the constitutional requirements under which the new term of the President begins on January 20 noon.
Since this day happened to be on a Sunday when all the federal offices are closed, the ceremonial inauguration was held today; which is only for the seventh time in the US history.
While the clouds of economic crisis and war that hovered over his first inauguration have vanished to a large extent, the mood of optimism and hope that infused his 2009 inauguration was missing to a large extent.
While last time, there were an estimated 1.8 million onlookers, the crowd today hovered around a mark of about 6,00,000.
His historic ascendancy to the White House in 2008 came with soaring public hopes and expectations for a new kind of governance that would close the vast partisan gulf developed in recent decades.
The President and his wife Michelle Obama started the day at a church service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, just across Lafayette Square from the White House.
The Vice President Joseph Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, joined the first couple at the service.