WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama is featuring eight Americans as "citizen co-chairs" of his inauguration, a new role created to highlight his first-term accomplishments with examples of lives that have either been improved by his actions or inspired his presidency.
Inaugural planners say the honorees include a woman with a brain tumor who no longer is denied health care for a pre-existing condition; an autoworker who got her job back after the General Motors bailout; and a gay pilot-in-training kicked out of the Air Force before the president repealed the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
Inauguration officials said Wednesday that the president has met most of the eight individuals during his first term and their inclusion in inaugural events is meant to showcase his administration's core values through real-life examples that people across the country can relate to.
It's a time-honored presidential practice to illustrate policy ideas with such anecdotes, and Obama frequently does so. He had those who say they were helped by his priorities introduce him at campaign rallies, and he frequently sprinkled their stories throughout his speeches. On Wednesday he announced gun control legislation before families of those killed in the Connecticut elementary school shooting. But inaugural planners say this is the first time people affected by a president's policies have been given such an official title at an inauguration.
I wonder if this inaugural will have low television ratings compared to others?
Orthodoxy SUCKS.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."- Galileo Galilei