(U-WIRE) WASHINGTON – Before tens of thousands of supporters, amid scattered protests and at the heart of an unprecedented security lockdown spanning over 100 city blocks of the nation’s capital, George Walker Bush was sworn in for a second term as 43rd president of the United States just before noon Thursday.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist administered the presidential oath in his first public appearance since he disclosed having thyroid cancer in October of last year.
In the 21-minute address that followed, President Bush said his administration would embark on a new push for human rights reforms abroad. The move would mark a major shift from traditional U.S. foreign policy and strategies of his first term, which emphasized cooperation with repressive governments in the war against terror.
“America’s belief in human dignity will guide our policies,” he said. “Yet rights must be more than the grudging concessions of dictators. They are secured by free dissent and the participation of the governed.”
In the first presidential inauguration since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush avoided mentioning the controversial wars and domestic actions his office took in response and instead called for the healing of a divided electorate.
“We have known divisions, which must be healed to move forward in great purposes — and I will strive in good faith to heal them,” he said as defeated democratic presidential contender Sen. John F. Kerry looked on pensively from behind. “Yet those divisions do not define America. We felt the unity and fellowship of our nation when freedom came under attack and our response came like a single hand over a single heart.”
As Bush traveled to the inauguration from a morning church service, and then from the ceremony to a congressional lunch, the inaugural parade route and 10 evening events, an omnipresent security detail watched over the president and his surroundings. Downtown streets closed to traffic had been cleared of the thin layer of snow that blanketed the National Mall the day before the ceremony. Sharpshooters watched from rooftops, fighter jets and helicopters circled overhead and bomb-sniffing dogs searched entering vehicles. Soldiers and police officers numbering about 13,000 manned the route of the inaugural parade and surrounding area.
