Moment that could bring immortality

Washington: Come Tuesday and the son of a Kenyan economist and a Kansan anthropologist will stand on the Capitol in Washington, D.C., and take the oath of office as the 44th President of the United States.

Barack Hussain Obama, the first African-American chief executive in the history of the republic, will place his hand on the Bible used by Abraham Lincoln during his first inauguration in 1861 and "solemnly swear to faithfully execute" his office. The bugles will sound, a 21-gun salute will boom out and the Marine Band will strike up Hail to the Chief. Then President Obama, in an instant the most powerful man in the world, will face his first test in office: his inaugural address.

The moment when the new president surveys the past, expounds his vision for the future and reasserts his country's claim to exceptional status is the high point of what is, in effect, a coronation. Obama, whose oratory helped propel him into the Oval Office, will undoubtedly deliver a good speech, but his ambition, as America's first black president, must be to make it immortal.

Healing words

It is no accident, then, that the president-elect has chosen Lincoln's Bible. The 16th president delivered two of the best inaugurals, and his second, made in the twilight of civil war, is regarded by many as the best. "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away," he declaimed. "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Lincoln did not have the newsreel or television to capture his delivery, but his words light up the page. Obama does not shrink from comparison with the man many regard as America's greatest president - indeed, he draws on him in his speeches. But who are the other members of the rhetorical Premier League? Certainly Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in 1933 asserted his firm belief that, despite the Great Depression, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"; and John F. Kennedy, who in 1961 implored his audience to: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country".

The secret, says Michael Fullilove of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, is to keep it short and sweet: "Most of the great inaugural addresses are short. They are simple, they are strong, they deal primarily with one theme and they have a big idea at their heart."

Brevity is a good idea for other reasons. By law, inaugurations are held in January (it was March up to 1933), and it is better not to freeze one's audience to death. William Henry Harrison's address deserves to be forgotten, but not its consequences: taking his oath on March 4, 1841, a bitterly cold day, the ninth president dispensed with overcoat and hat, then proceeded to drone on and on, clocking up more than 8,000 words in a two-hour ramble. Inevitably, the 68 year-old caught a cold; it developed into pneumonia, and he died a month later.

A pressing matter is undoubtedly a plus. So it was with Lincoln in 1861. He had arrived in Washington under military escort just one month before the outbreak of war.

"We must not be enemies," he begged. "Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

What will be Obama's focus? The economy, globalisation, a less strident foreign policy? Or the fact that America's dark night of the soul on race is finally nearing its end?

This time, for once, words will matter less than the man speaking them.