Obama's inauguration Rupert Cornwell: Obama: In the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln Out of America: Barack Obama prepares to swear on Tuesday to 'preserve, protect and defend' the constitution of the US, but so much more rests on his shoulders. Can he fulfil the huge expectations? Sunday, 18 January 2009
EPA Barack Obama waving from the train yesterday as he re-creates the journey made by Lincoln from Philadelphia to Washington America is living a strange and magical moment. In a fickle universe, US presidential inaugurations are a quadrennial rock of predictability, like leap years and the football World Cup. But never has there been one quite like the inauguration this week of Barack Obama. The event is always a republican version of a coronation, quasi-ecclesiastical even as it flaunts its populist trappings. But when Obama takes the oath of office at noon on Tuesday from John Roberts, the Chief Justice, the occasion will be far more, a beacon of hope in a tempest of fear. The closest in modern times was in 1961, when John F Kennedy brought hope and renewal. But back then the country was not terrified, merely jaded, in an era when the fundamentals of American civilisation seemed immutable.No longer. The meteor Obama has arrived in the midst of America's worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But somehow that only makes it more thrilling, rather as in wartime, when life itself could be extinguished at any moment. This weekend Washington is a city, and America a country, caught between jubilation and anticipation on one side and bankruptcies, lost jobs and lost homes on the other.But, however fleetingly, pleasure is outdoing pain. For Democrats, it is enough that after eight years one of their own is back in the White House. And…

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