President-elect Obama stepped into the Oval Office for the first time today. Today’s visit between the incoming and outgoing Presidents is more than a formality. It represents an historic transfer of power, unlike any seen before in the United States. Built by slaves, the White House will be occupied by an African-American First Family.
The President-elect and future First Lady met the Bushes at the South Portico of the White House. Mrs. Obama and Mrs. Bush broke off for a tour of the White House while President-elect Obama and President Bush strolled past the Rose Garden and then sat down for a meeting in the Oval office.
President-Elect Obama and Mrs. Obama Visit the White House
During Friday’s press conference, President-elect Obama stated he intended to head into the meeting with a "spirit of bipartisanship."
"I'm going to go in there with a spirit of bipartisanship and a sense that both the president and various leaders in Congress all recognize the severity of the situation right now and want to get stuff done."
The Oval Office meeting was private but it’s expected that there was much discussion of the current economic crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The meeting was held earlier than in past times, another signal of urgency for a smooth transition during wartime and the one of the nation’s worst economic crisis.
As Barack Obama transitions to power, President Bush is leaving office as with the highest disapproval ratings in recorded history.
Seventy-six percent of those questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday disapprove of how President Bush is handling his job.
That's an all-time high in CNN polling and in Gallup polling dating back to World War II.
"No other president's disapproval rating has gone higher than 70 percent. Bush has managed to do that three times so far this year," says CNN polling director Keating Holland. "That means that Bush is now more unpopular than Richard Nixon was when he resigned from office during Watergate with a 66 percent disapproval rating."
CNN Transition Poll
President-elect Obama is moving swiftly and has emphasized his approach to be one of "deliberate haste" as he assumes the Presidency. Likely will not squander a moment nor a bit of capital as he steps into the office of President. Obama has already indicated that he will immediately overturn a number of Bush policies:
President-elect Barack Obama is poised to move swiftly to reverse actions that President Bush took using executive authority, and his transition team is reviewing limits on stem cell research and the expansion of oil and gas drilling, among other issues, members of the team said Sunday.
"There’s a lot that the president can do using his executive authority without waiting for Congressional action, and I think we’ll see the president do that," John D. Podesta, a top transition leader, said Sunday. "He feels like he has a real mandate for change. We need to get off the course that the Bush administration has set."
NYT
Obama is also set to move forward quickly with a number of policy proposals he set introduced during his campaign, disregarding the false warnings from conservatives of "over-reaching."
Obama set to push ‘big bang’ reform package
By Edward Luce in ‘Washington
US President-elect Barack Obama intends to push a comprehensive programme of social and economic reform beyond an immediate emergency stimulus package, Rahm Emanuel, the next White House chief of staff, indicated on Sunday.
Mr Emanuel brushed aside concerns that an Obama administration would risk taking on too much when it takes office in January. He said Mr Obama saw the financial meltdown as an historic opportunity to deliver the large-scale investments that Democrats had promised for years.
Tackling the meltdown would not entail delays in plans for far-reaching energy, healthcare and education reforms when all three were also in crisis, he said. "These are crises you can no longer afford to postpone [addressing]."
Obama to Push Big Bang Reform
Today, another indication that Obama will maintain a progressive approach, it was announced today that he has hired Mike Lux,
Lux, who worked on the Clinton administration transition efforts in 1992, confirmed the hiring but, citing a need for clearance, declined to offer further information.
The staffing move provides the Obama team with an important outlet to the progressive community -- a constituency from which the president-elect currently enjoys great support but one that has a wide range of priorities and will be holding Obama most firmly to his campaign promises once he takes office.
HuffPo
Living up to his campaign motto of the "Fierce Urgency of Now," Obama is taking the lead with decisive, forward action, clearly a move that will create a paradigm shift that will affect our nation and the world.