Apathy and gun row hit numbers at inauguration

US president Barack Obama was officially sworn in yesterday ahead of today’s ceremonial inauguration, an event which is expected to attract well short of the 2m citizens who attended the groundbreaking occasion four years ago.

Second-term apathy, combined with a period of gloom and division, will hit numbers as the debate over gun control and the national debt drives more of the public away than usual.

This will be the 57th presidential inauguration and Obama is the 17th president to go through the process for a second time.

With courts closed on the traditional Jan 20 date enshrined in the constitution, the formal proceedings began early yesterday at the Naval Observatory, the official residence of the vice president, where Joe Biden was sworn in. Then the Blue Room in the White House witnessed Obama’s turn just before 12pm local time.

“This inauguration is going to be a symbol of how our democracy works and how we peacefully transfer power,” Obama said on Saturday as he launched the so-called nationwide day of service introduced four years ago as a mobilisation of volunteerism.

“It should also be an affirmation that we’re all in this together.”

An upcoming deadline over the contentious debt limit is looming large, with Congressional Republicans offering a plan that would allow for a three-month extension of the debt limit, requiring Congress to pass a budget within that timeframe with conservatives hell-bent on cuts in social welfare.

Meanwhile, those fiscal arguments could endanger the president’s mission to curb the availability of the sort of semi-automatic weapons which were used at the Newtown school massacre in December.

Last week, Obama unveiled a package of proposals which he hopes will lead to the restoration of a ban on military-grade firepower.

But that has stirred up the conservative base which, as the president memorably described during his first campaign for the highest office, holds dear to its guns and its second amendment rights.

Thousands rallied in cities across America on Saturday to mark “Gun Appreciation Day”, quickly arranged events to voice opposition to the gun control moves of the president and his vice-president.

Immigration reform is also high on the to-do list, with Irish-American lobbies one of many groups keeping an eye on the long proposed E3 Visa for skilled workers.

Today is also Martin Luther King Jr day in the US, a public holiday and one which has inspired Obama to swear his oath on the bible that belonged to the civil rights leader as well as on the more traditional bible which belonged to Abraham Lincoln, the country’s 16th president.

“The inauguration is a quasi-religious holiday, it is a celebrity gala, and it is an opportunity for political management all rolled into one,” said Professor Michael Cornfield, a political scientist at George Washington University. “The oath-taking, which is the religious part, the partying, the parade, which is the celebrity part, and the inaugural address, which is the political management part.”

All eyes and ears will be on the inaugural address, with the president attempting to employ a conciliatory tone domestically while also addressing a wide range of issues internationally.

And with 44-year-old Richard Blanco the first Latino poet to recite at an inauguration, the expectations are high that Obama could be the first president to utter a few lines in Spanish, given the support he received in November from that ethnic group.