Barack Obama New Yorker Magazine Cover January 26, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama at the Bipartisan dinner, January 19, 2009

President-elect Barack Obama is on the cover of New Yorker Magazine, January 26, 2009, in an illustration that evokes the nation’s first President, George Washington. See the cover and photos and video of Obama at a bipartisan dinner in the National Building Museum on January 19, 2009 in Washington, DC.

In an essay written for the issue and the occasion of the Inauguration of the 44th President, Nicholas Lemann discusses achieving greatness and what may lie ahead for the Obama administration.

Obama’s election was a landmark in American history, but it will, we hope, be a self-negating landmark, because Americans will no longer unconsciously treat not being white as an insuperable barrier to the highest office. His campaign was also a landmark (how many e-mails a week did you get from Obama-land?), but what he did will now be copied to the point of becoming universal. He and the people around him ought to be thinking about what enduring achievements they can accomplish while in office. If that’s the test—and it should be—then Obama can’t meet it merely by exercising his staggering eloquence, or by quickly putting into place short-term solutions to crises, like the stimulus package, or by changing the tone and the symbolic valence of the government. He has to create institutions that will outlast him.

President-elect Barack Obama at the Bipartisan dinner, January 19, 2009

Lincoln and Roosevelt not only rallied the nation through crisis but also, respectively, made and remade their parties in ways that kept their policies alive. NATO and the United Nations, started on Harry Truman’s watch, are still basic shaping forces in the world, in ways that even the most deft Presidential response to even the most urgent international crisis can never be. The same principle applies in domestic affairs: legislation and regulation that affect very large numbers of people and are built to last politically and economically are what great Presidencies are made of.

Source: New Yorker: Greatness Cover image: Mark Pasetsky’s CoverAwards

Photos: President-elect Barack Obama at the bipartisan dinner in the National Building Museum on January 19, 2009 in Washington, DC. (Photo credit: Getty Images North America)

President-elect Barack Obama and Senator John McCain at the Bipartisan dinner, January 19, 2009

Former rival Senator John McCain attended the Bipartisan dinner and President-elect paid tribute to him, praising him for his patriotism and his notable bipartisan achievements. Here is video of some of his remarks.