Category: Inauguration | Main

The Note: Obama Waits on Change for January

November 21, 2008 8:21 AM

ABC News' Rick Klein reports in Friday's Note:

Change doesn’t have to wait until January.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, is gone. (A sign of a new day.)

Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., is gone, partly, too. (A sign of a new order.)

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., isn’t going anywhere. (But she’s gone quite a distance to get there.) 

Penny Pritzker leaves before she ever even arrives. 

And the auto bailout came back to life after it was declared dead, only to die again. (It may yet rise again -- though not until next month.) 

As for President-elect Barack Obama -- he is, for the most part, waiting for January.

Read the rest of The Note -- and get all the latest on the 2008 election, Congress, the White House and the wide world of politics every day -- from Rick Klein by bookmarking this link.

Thus far through the transition, we’re learning that Obama remains, at his core, a cautious and patient politician -- one who can be quite stingy with his political capital.

Meanwhile, the stock market is in freefall, Detroit is near collapse, and Congress is in a stalemate. Obama has had nearly half of his Cabinet filled for him, without a single formal announcement.

(If you’re scoring at home, he’s now had more haircuts than press conferences as president-elect.)

Other than a few comments, Obama has chosen not to play in the current crisis: “With the stock market plunging and the credit market entering a new freeze, cries are being heard for a new government intervention to prop up major financial institutions before President-elect Barack Obama takes office,” Floyd Norris writes in The New York Times. “By resigning from the Senate before the current session began and allowing it to appear that a sense of drift could prevail until he is inaugurated, Mr. Obama may have missed an opportunity to exert leadership.” 

“How much can go wrong in the two months before Mr. Obama takes the oath of office? The answer, unfortunately, is: a lot,” Paul Krugman writes in his column. “At minimum, the next two months will inflict serious pain on hundreds of thousands of Americans, who will lose their jobs, their homes, or both. What’s really troubling, however, is the possibility that some of the damage being done right now will be irreversible.” 

“The problem is that nothing of significance can or will happen until the new President takes office in January, even though there is -- finally -- a great appetite for action in Washington. This is going to be a very frustrating few months,” Time’s Joe Klein writes.

Continue reading today's Note by clicking HERE.

ABC News' Hope Ditto contributed to this report.

November 21, 2008 in Biden, Joe, Bush, George W., Clinton, Bill, Clinton, Hillary, Inauguration, Obama, Barack, Palin, Sarah, Washington, White House | Permalink | User Comments (43)

Scalp Inauguration Tickets...and Get a Year Hard Time?

November 17, 2008 2:49 PM

ABC's Z. Byron Wolf Report: Say what you will about the laws of the open market in these days of Wall Street, insurance, home loan, and (maybe) auto industry  bailouts. If the government is going to get involved where those industries fail, why not get involved in the Presidential Inauguration ticket business too.

Where there's limited supply, demand rises. And what are supposed to be the choicest free seats to the inauguration were supposed to be doled out free by lawmakers, while many more, some guess 1.5 million, less-lucky people will watch along the National Mall.

And around the business of ticketing the inauguration, a cottage industry has sprung up. Some online sites have already banned the sale of tickets. There are seven security measures implanted in the tickets themselves. The members of Congress who get the tickets are inventing ways (raffles) to appear fair in doling the tickets out.

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a member of the Joint Congressional Committee on the Inaugural Ceremony, wants to go a step further. She took to the Senate floor Monday and announced legislation she is writing that would make the sale of the tickets illegal. Selling them would saddle a scalper with a "class A" misdemeanor, a fine of up to $100K, and up to a year in jail.

"We've all read the news reports  tickets bid on the Internet for $5,000 a piece, some as high as $40,000 each," said Feinstein on the Senate floor.  "And 15 to 20 sites today are selling tickets they do not have and will not have unless somehow some way they obtain them. I find it unconscionable."

Feinstein continued, "These tickets are supposed to be free for people, for the volunteers who gave up their weekends walking miles door-to-door to encourage voters to town out to the polls -- turn out to the polls on election day. for members of the African American community to see one of their own take the oath of office for the highest office in the land, for schoolchildren to witness history, and for the American public to watch this affirmation of our constitution. This peaceful transition from one administration to another. this is going to be a major civic event of our time."

Its unclear if Feinstein's tough on scalping approach will catch on. Senators and Congressmen from pre-November 8 Congress are still the nation's lawmakers and they are in Washington this week for a lame duck session to consider a bailout for the auto industry and extending unemployment benefits and, if they add Sen. Feinstein's scalping law to their agenda and pass it, President Bush, whose seat at the inauguration is guaranteed, could sign it into law before he hands off the baton.

November 17, 2008 in Inauguration, Washington, White House | Permalink | User Comments (13)