Inaugural addresses can't be judged right away: Like recipes, their greatness depends on how things turn out. If Franklin D. Roosevelt's efforts to save the economy had failed, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" would sound today like a plutocrat's callow attempt to make poor people forget their hunger. The rush to judge Barack Obama's Inaugural Address seems more premature than most. It's true that he didn't wow the crowd as he's done in the past. He aimed instead for something quieter and less immediate, but potentially more lasting: to describe a new kind of politics, which is really an old kind of politics.We've seen plenty of incoming presidents mouth phrases like these, of course. But Obama might, you know, mean it. If, like FDR, he makes good on what he's told us, the speech-could one day be celebrated as the overture for a new era.
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