All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

Books of poetry rarely fly off shelves. Then again, not many poets get to debut a piece in front of millions of people.

Unfortunately, Elizabeth Alexander, President Obama’s choice for inaugural poet, has not been able to translate her widely televised reading into a trip to the best seller list.

Alexander, a professor of African-American studies and English at Yale University, is a prominent writer and poet hailed for her pared down style. At the ceremony, she read a poem entitled "Praise Song for the Day" that was both a hymn to the power of language and a reflection on the historical importance of Mr. Obama's election as the country's first African-American president.

Since that time, Alexander's work has struggled to find an audience in print, selling only 6,000 copies, according to the Associated Press. The poem's publisher, Graywolf Press, announced a first printing of 100,000 copies.

Read full post…

Photographers Stephen K. Schuster and Lenard Smith expected to sleep in the car their first night in D.C. and neither of them cared. Driving down from New York City, they had 80 rolls of film between them and their only game plan was to make art. In their portraits, they singled out personalities that spoke to the energy and diversity of the crowd. Women in their best fur coats, troops sitting in the winter sun, a young girl popping gum, another waving a plastic flag. Each claiming a piece of history.

Read full post…

CBS News chief Washington correspondent and Face the Nation anchor Bob Schieffer looked back on this historic week on the CBS Evening News. His comments:

It really has [been quite a week], Katie, and you know the scene I will always remember was the look on Barack Obama's face when he came out on the Capitol steps and looked out on that great crowd that stretched over a mile before him.

Wouldn't you just love to know what was going through his mind at that moment? He had to be awed by just the sight of that gathering. And with the severity of the problems he faced, no human, no matter how confident, it seems to me, could look out on that crowd and not wonder, "Can I live up to the expectations of all those people?"

Yet, in the three days since then, he has laid out an ambitious program, promises of more transparency in government, new walls between the government and special interests. By executive order, he will close Guantanamo prison, and in outlawing torture, he has told the world that we will practice what we preach. These are not insignificant things, nor is his plan for economic recovery.

But it's gonna take more than just talk to put all that in place. He'll have to rein in some Democrats. He'll have to give Republicans some of what they want and that won't be easy. But I think, Katie, the huge crowds that came to Washington have changed the tone here. If he can take advantage of that, I think he has a real chance to get some of this done. I think he's off to a very good start.

Sunday on Face the Nation, Schieffer will have the first exclusive interview with Joe Biden since he became vice president.

Barack Obama's Inaugural committee has acknowledged that the classical music quartet recorded the performance that was heard by spectators and the world on Inauguration Day.

People sitting near the quartet of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Itzhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill could hear them play the piece "Air and Simple Gifts," written by John Williams. But anyone else in the massive crowds or watching on TV (or online) heard an audio recording made two days earlier, which the performers played along with.

Spokeswoman Carole Florman told the Associated Press and the New York Times (which first reported the story) that they were worried the weather, which was around 30 degrees during the ceremony, would cause the instruments to break or be out of tune.

"This isn't Milli Vanilli," Florman told the AP. "They had to perform in such cold weather, the instruments couldn't possibly be in tune. They were able to play in sync with the tape. It's not unusual."

Read full post…

Chief Justice John Roberts came to the White House to readminister the oath of office to Pres. Obama that he fumbled during Tuesday's Inauguration Ceremony, reports CBS' Mark Knoller.

Read full post…

This post was written by CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller.

When President Obama asked Vice President Biden to administer the oath of office to a number of White House staffers this afternoon, Biden asked for a copy of the oath, saying, "My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts."

It was a bit of sarcasm directed at the Chief Justice, who misstated the words of the presidential oath while administering it yesterday at the Inauguration.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs says there are no plans for the president to retake the oath, despite not saying it exactly as stated in Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution at his inauguration yesterday.

"He should probably go ahead and take the oath again," George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley told the Washington Post. "If he doesn't, there are going to be people who for the next four years are going to argue that he didn't meet the constitutional standard. I don't think it's necessary, and it's not a constitutional crisis. This is the chief justice's version of a wardrobe malfunction."

But Gibbs tells CBS News that "no one has suggested" a do-over on the oath.

As for Biden's crack, it brought laughter and then groans from the audience of staffers in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The first numbers are coming out for the television audience that tuned into Barack Obama's inauguration, and, well, a pretty good percentage of Americans watched it.

Across the 56 local markets measured by Neilsen Media Research, 29.2 percent of households tuned in to see the president-elect become the president.

That's up from 20.8 percent who watched George W. Bush's 2000 inauguration and way up from the 11.8 percent who watched Mr. Bush in 2004, according to Neilsen.

Read full post…

Produced in partnership with American University.

By now we've heard from Beyonce, Stevie, Bono, and a menagerie of musicians so famous they don't use last names. But they weren't the only ones bringing musical spirit to D.C.

Our reporters caught up with a spontaneous Haitian dance party at the National Mall, a flute and percussion jam fest on Pennsylvania Avenue and the beautiful harmonies of the Boys Choir of Kenya singing our national anthem.

You can watch the video below:



Reported by Arunjana Das, Dipanwita Ghosh, June Kim, Nick Schwellenbach, graduate students at American University. You can see more work by some of these students at the American Observer.

In tonight's Web-only Inauguration wrap-up, Katie Couric mentioned a question she asked President Barack Obama in an interview shown in tonight's prime-time special, "Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama." It was about a subject that’s still a little touchy to him: smoking.

(CBS)

COURIC: You don't really think of this job as working at home, do you, necessarily (laughter). But speaking of stress, what's going on with the smoking thing?

PRES. OBAMA: You know, we're doing fine with it. I know everybody likes to poke, you know. I haven't had an interview yet where this one doesn't get raised.

COURIC: Well, I think people just wanna know how it's going. And I think – they feel for you.

PRES. OBAMA: Yeah, we're doing fine. I'll do better if people don't keep on bringing it up (laughter).

Later in the evening, during the Webcast, Couric asked Politico.com's Mike Allen if he could read anything between the lines of Mr. Obama's answer, such as, that he still is wrestling with the habit.

Allen concurred that it's possible, but suggested that perhaps we might all go a bit easier on the president. After all, he spent an altogether frantic day looking completely cool, poised and collected.

"If you look at the way President Obama has handled himself and the way he's been portrayed, I'm happy he has a few faults, weaknesses," Allen laughed ...

Read full post…

In tonight's Web-only Inauguration wrap-up, Katie Couric mentioned a question she asked President Barack Obama in an interview shown in tonight's prime-time special, "Change and Challenge: The Inauguration of Barack Obama." It was about a subject that’s still a little touchy to him: smoking.

(CBS)

COURIC: You don't really think of this job as working at home, do you, necessarily (laughter). But speaking of stress, what's going on with the smoking thing?

PRES. OBAMA: You know, we're doing fine with it. I know everybody likes to poke, you know. I haven't had an interview yet where this one doesn't get raised.

COURIC: Well, I think people just wanna know how it's going. And I think – they feel for you.

PRES. OBAMA: Yeah, we're doing fine. I'll do better if people don't keep on bringing it up (laughter).

So Couric asked Politico.com's Mike Allen if he could read anything between the lines of Mr. Obama's answer, such as, that he still is wrestling with the habit.

Allen concurred that it's possible, but suggested that perhaps we might all go a bit easier on the new president. After all, he spent an altogether frantic day looking completely cool, poised and collected.

"If you look at the way President Obama has handled himself and the way he's been portrayed, I'm happy he has a few faults, weaknesses," Allen laughed ...

Read full post…