by J. Michael Sharman, Contributing Writer
“So help me, God.”
According to the British newspaper, The Guardian, those were the first words Barrack Obama spoke after becoming the President of the United States. They reasoned that because Mr. Obama became President Obama as soon as he completed the mandatory oath of office written in our U.S. Constitution, his voluntary oath to God immediately following that constitutional oath was his first statement as president.
As the next four or eight years of the Obama presidency unfolds, President Obama may often be prompted to change the emphasis of his first presidential phrase and repeatedly cry out, “So, help me, God!”
And it hasn’t taken long for the problems to begin piling up.
As President and Mrs. Obama were still in the reviewing stands for the inaugural parade, Wall Street closed with the largest Inauguration Day stock market fall in history: a 4.1% drop in which the Dow closed down 332.42 points.
After the markets closed, as the Obamas began their rounds of the inaugural balls, USA Today reported online that Nouriel Roubini, the New York University professor who accurately predicted the economic and stock-market collapses, estimated that U.S. financial losses may hit $3.6 trillion, and, Prof. Roubini said, “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”
In his first meeting with Democratic and Republican Congressional leaders, President Obama told the House Republicans he was prepared to do everything within his strength to force his economic stimulus bill through even without their bipartisan consensus: “I won. I’m the President,” he reminded them.
Maybe so, but the economy is freefalling anyway.
Two days after his inauguration, Microsoft said that it would be cutting its work force by 5,000 jobs. The next day, another American manufacturing icon, Harley Davidson, which had already laid off 730 people in 2008, announced that it was going to be cutting 1,100 more jobs in 2009 and 2010.
As the nation’s 44th president began his first full work week:
• CNN reported Home Depot is laying off 7,000 support and management staff ;
• Reuters said Sprint Nextel will cut its workforce by14 percent, which means 8,000 jobs lost ;
• Bloomberg reported that Caterpillar will be letting go 20,000 people;
• The Washington Post said two pharmaceutical companies, Pfizer and Wyeth, announced a merger, which one would think would be good news, but the merger is expected to cause 8,000 job cuts;
• A spokesman for John Deere emailed the Associated Press that it will lay off 190 employees in Davenport, Iowa.
And that was just the bad news that came in on Monday morning.
When Mr. Obama took the oath of office, he did so with his hand resting on the same Bible that Abraham Lincoln’s hand rested on when he gave the exact same oath.
During a particularly troubling time in Mr. Lincoln’s first administration, a minister told Lincoln he hoped “the Lord was on the Union’s side.”
Mr. Lincoln’s responded, “I am not at all concerned with that, for we know that the Lord is always on the side of right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”
President Obama and we, the people can make sure we get on God’s side by following the instructions He has given us on how to get there: “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14 (NKJV)
If we ignore that straightforward instruction, we are going to have a lot of miserable Monday mornings in our future.
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