PRESIDENT OBAMA!

One thing I am very curious about: the website for the Obama White House.

The White House’s official website, Whitehouse.gov, was launched in October 1994 under the Clinton administration. It looked like this. Over the years it changed to this, then this, then this; here is how it looked at the end of the Clinton presidency.

Around noon on January 20, 2001, the first Whitehouse.gov transition occurred. The Bush administration’s first website looked like this — pretty crappy, even for 2001. Here are a couple of articles about it. Eventually it improved.

But today, at noon or sometime thereafter, the keys to the website will pass the new administration. Will it have a blog? A Flickr feed? A YouTube channel? Some secret new technology invented by Google that will be introduced to the world today?

We’ll soon find out.

Contrary to popular belief, Obama will not become president when he takes the oath of office. I didn’t realize this until a couple of days ago.

According to the official schedule (see page 14), Obama takes the oath at 11:56 a.m., four minutes before he actually becomes president.

When I found this out, it really bothered me, for purely anal retentive reasons, because I envisioned some invisible mantle of power transferring from Bush to Obama at the precise moment Obama says “so help me God.” But I guess it makes sense for him to take the oath in advance of becoming president instead of at the moment he becomes president, or else there will be several seconds in which he’s president without having taken the oath. I suppose it doesn’t really matter how far in advance of noon he takes the oath, since he’ll constitutionally become president at the stroke of twelve.

So even after you watch Obama recite the oath and everyone errupts into euphoria and the band plays “Hail to the Chief,” Bush is still president for another couple of minutes. But by the time Obama begins his Inaugural Address at 12:01, he’s the new president.

Just some TV-watching advice from your friendly neighborhood Tin Man…