New President

Some of the most powerful Democrats in Congress appear to have forgotten that voters chose a new president last November by the largest margin in a generation. Now, President Obama is facing the most serious economic crisis in recent history and the leaders of key congressional committees are rejecting critical elements of his tax and spending plan out of hand, without discussion or debate. Many politicians see this as Washington business as usual. But Mr. Obama was elected by voters seeking real change and change requires compromise.

President Bush has turned to his inner circle of loyalists to clean up the mess made by one of its own. But given the parameters within which he was working, the president seems to have made the best possible choice in naming Robert B. Zoellick to replaced Paul Wolfowitz as president of the World Bank. Unlike Mr. Wolfowitz, Mr. Zoellick is a competent manager who is highly regarded in the diplomatic, financial and international development communities. Also unlike the man he would replace, Mr. Zoellick is no ideologue.

The Westminster Common Council selected a new president at its reorganizational meeting last night.Councilman Damian L. Halstad, 37, a Westminster attorney in his second council term, replaces Edward S. Calwell in the nonvoting chairman's seat.Calwell, 53, a self-employed training consultant and antiques dealer, had been council president since November 1994.L. Gregory Pecoraro was chosen vice president, or president pro tem, of the council.Also last night, newcomer Kevin L. Dayhoff took his seat on the council.

At high noon yesterday at Baltimore's College of Notre Dame, the tower clock started chiming to celebrate the inauguration of the new president, Mary Pat Seurkamp, resplendent in a bright blue robe.The 51-year-old Seurkamp (pronounced "sircamp") is the first laywoman to become president of the 102-year-old college in North Baltimore.No one on the Roman Catholic women's college faculty could have ordered better weather for the pomp and circumstance. Marching in the academic procession behind professors were Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and the archbishop of Baltimore, Cardinal William H. Keeler.

The search for a new president of Howard Community College is nearly complete.The Columbia institution's board of trustees has selected two candidates from a pool of 67 for the position held for 16 years by Dwight A. Burrill, who retired in September.The finalists are Mary Ellen Duncan, president of the State University of New York at Delhi, and Alex Johnson, provost and vice president of Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland -- the same school Burrill left for Howard Community College.

The board of trustees of Howard Community College has formed a 33-member search committee to select candidates for the presidency of the 5,000-student Columbia institution.The committee -- composed of school administrators, faculty, students and local business and community leaders -- will be responsible for interviewing candidates and recommending an unspecified number of semifinalists to the board at a Nov. 18 meeting."The search is going very well," said David A. Rakes, who chairs the board of trustees.

BUJUMBURA, Burundi -- The new president of Burundi took his message of reconciliation to the people yesterday, explaining his reasons for the coup he led last week and asking them to "calm all the ethnicities, to let everyone know that there is no Hutu, no Tutsi, but only one Burundian people."Burundi, like neighboring Rwanda, has been torn by fighting between the majority Hutu and the Tutsi ethnic groups that has claimed 150,000 lives in the last three years.The coup, led by the Tutsi-dominated army, overthrew the Hutu president.

WASHINGTON -- The apparent congressional breakthrough on health-care reform has to be a bittersweet outcome for President Clinton, who saw his young presidency plunged into gloom by the spectacular failure of his 1993-94 campaign for much more ambitious reforms.The greatly scaled-down bill upon which House and Senate negotiators agreed at last week's end, co-sponsored by Republican Sen. Nancy Kassebaum and Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy, features the two main provisions over which there was minimal dispute in the original administration bill.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, at the midway point of his elected term, has identified the problem: He thinks he's done a terrific job, but not enough Americans know it.So in the time before his State of the Union speech tomorrow, Mr. Clinton devoted himself to recapturing the hearts and minds of the public that elected him in 1992, but that has appeared indifferent to his administration's achievements.As a first step, he has the White House churning out press releases, briefing books, "talking points" and other testimonials to the effect that the past two years have been highly successful ones for the president -- and for the people.

Newt is Time's man of the year but fair-minded folk believe the honor should be shared with Bill and Bob. No one of them alone could have shut the gummint.Haiti has a freely elected president no one wanted. The people want Aristide. The thugs and CIA want anyone but. So, Aristide's pal Rene Preval it is.The murder rate fell everywhere but Baltimore. Tradition!Cheer up. The new president of the National Rifle Association is a woman.

It's been eight years since Sept. 11, 2001, and we are still at war in Afghanistan and still have not captured Osama bin Laden or Mullah Mohammed Omar. Reconstruction on the site of the World Trade Center has only just begun. We still have not figured out how to handle combatants in the global war on terror in a way that is fully consistent with our values. We are not close to declaring victory, and sometimes it seems that we may never be. But on this anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon and in the skies over Pennsylvania, it's important to recall why we are fighting and what is at stake.

WASHINGTON -When Americans learned that unemployment had reached its highest level in a quarter-century last week, President Barack Obama was midway through a star turn in Europe. And next week, with barely time to pack fresh shirts and refuel Air Force One, he's off again - first to Mexico, then on to a summit in the Caribbean. It's the sort of thing that can get a political leader into trouble, jetting out of town while the home front suffers. But Obama's strategists laid out a plan to minimize the risks.

Some of the most powerful Democrats in Congress appear to have forgotten that voters chose a new president last November by the largest margin in a generation. Now, President Obama is facing the most serious economic crisis in recent history and the leaders of key congressional committees are rejecting critical elements of his tax and spending plan out of hand, without discussion or debate. Many politicians see this as Washington business as usual. But Mr. Obama was elected by voters seeking real change and change requires compromise.

WASHINGTON - In only his second week in office, Barack Obama is punching the restart button on his presidency. Yesterday, Day 14 of a tenure that began with high hopes and soaring promises of bringing a new competence to Washington, Obama essentially admitted that he had lost ground in confronting his biggest challenge, fixing the country's crippled economy, due to the "self-inflicted injury" of selecting appointees who had failed to pay their taxes....

For most of the last eight years, the Bush administration worked hard to keep the business of government behind closed doors and off limits to the public. Now, President Barack Obama has wasted little time in rejecting this sinister passion for secrecy, ordering staff and agencies to consider government documents open and available to citizens. It's a bias toward openness that every American favoring greater government accountability should cheer. The Obama administration has a lot of work ahead, implementing policies to end the Bush era of secrecy.

President Barack Obama didn't speak to the ages in his inaugural address but instead pressed Americans to "pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking the nation." It was a heartening admonition from a president widely criticized when a candidate as being more interested in the power of his words than tough-minded solutions to the critical problems America faces. This time, President Obama rejected what he called the stale political arguments of cynics.

There is a maxim that raises the hackles of most people. It is this: All things end badly. Who wants to believe that? It's so grim, so lacking in uplift, such a bummer of an observation that once, when I mentioned this to a young woman whose mother had just died of a wasting disease, she recoiled in shock and said, "That's not true," rejecting the notion of bad endings even while experiencing the pain of significant loss firsthand. The departure of George W. Bush and his not-so-merry band from executive power in Washington is further evidence of things ending badly, especially when contrasted with the widespread euphoria greeting the man who replaced him yesterday as president.

And so here we are. We have lived to see the day when a black man becomes president of the United States. And he's not only that. He's intelligent and thoughtful, eloquent and interesting, compassionate and progressive. He's what we want for our sons and our daughters - not only a president to lead them to the future, but one who can show them all the possibilities in their lives. The Barack Obama story says: Read, listen, learn, get involved, get busy and make a difference. It's not what's handed to you but what you earn that defines you. Education is the way out and the way up. Intelligence is cool.

When Barack Obama enters the Oval Office for the first time tomorrow, the "In" basket on his desk will already be piled high. The new president has a couple of wars and an economy in a tailspin to deal with. If that were not enough, just about every constituency - from ecologists to dressmakers - seems to have a stake in his presidency. And they are all convinced they have Obama's ear. An analysis by PolitiFact shows that Obama made 510 promises while running for president - twice as many as George Bush and Bill Clinton - and the fact-checking Web site for the St. Petersburg Times is going to keep track of every one. Obama promised everything from ending the war in Iraq and cutting taxes to establishing programs to help animals survive global warming, according to the Web site.

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama shifted yesterday to the task of forming his administration, amid concerns that the nation's challenges could lead to dashed hopes among his most ardent supporters. Obama, who spent the day meeting privately with aides in Chicago, will find the task of governing greatly complicated by the economic downturn, analysts said. With far less money available for new spending, he risks letting down supporters whose anticipation soared after his landslide electoral victory.