Obama’s 100 days Articles

Politicians are fond of nautical metaphors to help explain the troubled
economic times in which we live so it was fitting that Gordon Brown
gave President Obama a pen holder carved from the timbers of HMS
Gannet. Gannet was part of the Victorian fleet that ruled the waves
alongside HMS Resolute, a ship whose second life was also a present
from Britain to America. The desk that Obama uses in the Oval Office –
carved from Resolute’s bow – was bestowed on President Rutherford Hayes
in 1880.

President Obama is just days away from signing the world’s largest ever
peace-time stimulus plan. But his dream of an end to Washington’s
entrenched partisan battles, the setting aside of “childish things,”
has not materialised.

709 days after Barack Obama announced his candidacy
for President of the United States of America, he will finally assume
that office. The campaign, which began for Obama in Springfield,
Illinois, was the longest in history; the 12-week transition remains a
legacy of America’s geographic size. In the first 150 years of the
Republic, the changeover lasted four months allowing representatives
from the frontier to put their affairs in order and make the lengthy
journey across thousands of miles and tricky terrain to the capital.

There is no equivalent in British politics to the American inaugural address. New prime ministers returning from Buckingham Palace after a general election or internal party leadership contest have barely had a couple of hours to prepare some remarks to the gathered media in Downing Street. By the time he looks east over an estimated crowd of four million stretched out along the historic National Mall, Barack Obama will have had 77 days since winning the election to think about what he will say.