Both first timers, the Chief Justice (John Roberts) and the new President fumbled the public oath, missing and reordering words to the mild amusement of a few but largely unnoticed otherwise. Although legally unnecessary, a private oath was later performed at the White House out of an “abundance of caution” – apparently to preempt conspiracy theorists from blogging overtime. They will work overtime anyway.

Americans needed this inauguration more than ever for it is the best of times in America, and it is the worst of times. Politically, Americans have never been more united in their exhilaration. Economically, they have never been more despondent since the Great Depression. White America is awash in Black, along with Brown and Yellow, and a solid majority of even the Republicans are solidly behind the new President despite his middle name. The markets delivered their own message, the Dow Jones recording its lowest in two months at the end of the day. It was a moment to cheer amidst the despair, but the reality was nigh as night follows day.

The Speech

The inaugural speech, the most watched political speech in the planet’s history, “captured the moment” as Obama had promised, but not quite the same way as pundits were predicting. In front of the largest inaugural gathering since Lyndon Johnson took the oath in 1965, Obama delivered a speech that was sterner than soaring, more educational than inspirational, yet a message steeped history, tempered by the present and resolute for the future. It was the speech of the writer in him rather than the orator, to read and reflect upon rather than enthuse and applaud.

As with the victory speech in Chicago, in November, Obama’s inaugural eschewed the memorable takeaways that were aplenty in the Kennedy inaugural, but laid down the main markers of his presidency. It is a measure of the man, as I wrote in November, that he has come to realize even before taking office and in spite of inexperience that he will be judged not by his eloquence but by his performance as President. Starting with the transition, Obama is faring even better as President than he did as a candidate.

In one respect, the speech did not hold back. More than any time in the campaign, Obama hit on the enormous significance of his phenomenon for African Americans. He bluntly reminded the Americans that they had elected as President a man “whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant.” There was no honourable mention of his (White) mother’s side as there was in his celebrated ‘race speech’ in Philadelphia. But that invocation is not necessary anymore because Obama has shown that he is steeped in that half of the American tradition as thoroughly as any other American politician and he is possessed of the sense of American history as well as any one else. In fact, he could articulate that sense better than most. He is the quintessential insider who can also be portrayed as the outsider.

The speech hit on a number of themes each one elegantly straying from another in the manner of a sermon. There were quotes from St. Paul and George Washington, and varying echoes of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson and even Clinton. America is still a young nation of celebrated risk-takers and “men and women obscure in their labour”; their best is not behind them but is yet to come. This generation like generations past will be grand in its ambitions regardless of carping cynics. The market is the pre-eminent path to wealth and freedom but needs “a watchful eye.” The challenges are new but there are no substitutes for the old American values of “honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.” America must leave behind old debates, “set aside childish habits”, stop consuming like there is no tomorrow, and change with the changing world.

The most telling moment in the speech which was also the severest indictment of the Bush Administration came when Obama said “we reject as false the choice between safety and our ideals.” With unprecedented swiftness so soon after inauguration, the new President has signed executive orders to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within one year, ban harsh interrogation methods and suspend military trials of suspects. Appearing in the State Department with the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, President Obama said, “with no exception and without equivocation America will not torture”.

These are not the changes of a maverick but the validation of America’s founding promises, Obama repeatedly asserted in the inaugural speech. Whether it is the ending of slavery and segregation, controlling the market, reinforcing health care and social security, or fighting terrorism without abandoning freedom, Obama linked every one of them to “the meaning of our liberty and our creed.” America’s transgressions in the past, he seemed to argue, were results of the failure to be “faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.” Again, he is the insider calling on the Americans to march with him to the drums of their founding fathers.

[Kenyans gathered in Kisumu to celebrate. Mr. Obama's father was born in Kenya.-more in pics: NY Times]

America and the World

President Kennedy delivering his inaugural in 1961 at the height of the Cold War, heralded “a new generation of Americans born in this century”. In keeping with the times and the changing face of America, Obama is calling on the strength of America’s “patchwork heritage” and the plurality its people - “Christians, Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers … shaped by every language and culture, and drawn from every end of this earth” - for his country to “play its role in ushering in a new era of peace” in a world troubled by old hates and new battle lines. To the Muslim world, the new President has signaled his willingness to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.”

He did not acknowledge or articulate the significance of the changing world economic order and its implications for continuing American dominance. Instead, he seems to be relying on America’s plurality as the microcosm of the world to project a positive American influence. There is new hope about a new America in a new world especially after their disastrous relationship during the last eight years. Obama is promising to work with “old friends and former foes” to “lessen the nuclear threat, and roll back the spectre of a warming planet.” More than any other American President, Barack Obama is well poised to relate to the outside world with new meaning and better understanding. But that alone is not enough to turn what is mostly a frosty relationship in many parts of the world into a friendly one.

After Vietnam, America has mostly been the interested outsider in world conflicts. Under President Bush, America became a party to the conflict in two of the most intractable areas in the world – the Middle East and Afghanistan. President Obama is sending every signal that America is changing course in both places and is restoring the respect to the United Nations that was so badly wounded throughout the Bush years. He promised and has signed orders to do government business in the light of day and according to the rule of law, to be transparent and to be accountable, changes that are of significance both internally and in relation to the outside world. But how much change in substance can these changes in approach and style deliver?

The political world outside America has always seen little difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. Within America, however, the difference between the two Parties has been seen as the dominant historical dynamic of American progress. But the more penetrating school in American historiography has challenged this myth of difference and highlighted the fundamental ideological consensus over individual and property rights and the cultural values of “self-help, free enterprise, competition and beneficent cupidity.”

According to a seminal member of this school, Richard Hofstadter, Franklin Roosevelt was a rare leader who recognized the failure of tradition and dared to take a different path. The New Deal was Roosevelt’s response, although, according to Hofstadter, President Roosevelt while daring in practical innovations could not bring about a change in the mindset of the Americans to supplement and sustain his policy changes. The New Deal was assailed even as it was being implemented and dismantling the New Deal became the preoccupation of much of America’s postwar history; with the assurance of material plenty the rage against big government often took the form of ‘culture wars’ over abortion, sexuality and religious fundamentalism. It is these wars, “childish habits”, that President Obama is promising to put an end to, while keeping the underlying consensus intact.

Of all the Presidents after Roosevelt only Lyndon Johnson was the unabashed legatee of the New Deal. Candidate Obama became critical of the market only after it bottomed out on Wall Street; until then he was the cautious, conservative insider. Although his gravitation to a new New Deal has been more opportunistic than preconceived, he has the intellectual gravitas and the advantage of a generational movement to attempt a change in the American mindset that Roosevelt could not. But will he or won’t he?

The ironic juxtaposition “Insider as Outsider” in the title of this article, is my adaptation of Hofstadter’s chapter titles in his historical classic, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, to describe, for example, Jefferson – Aristocrat as Democrat, Theodore Roosevelt – Conservative as Progressive, Woodrow Wilson – Conservative as Liberal, and Franklin Roosevelt – Patrician as Opportunist. In that vein, Barack Obama, although portrayed as an outsider, is very much an American insider. Whether he will break America out of the mould of laissez faire market and cultural narcissism remains to be seen. We are living in politically interesting times, the deadly violence and economic hard times notwithstanding.