The challenges for the new president

AN INAUGURATION is a time of renewal, and in his speech yesterday, President Barack Obama reassured an anxious nation that we can overcome present and future difficulties by returning to the time-tested tenets of our past.

"Our challenges may be new," Obama said. "But those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

But even as he rooted himself in traditional values, Obama made it clear how distinct a break his presidency will mark with the last administration. With George W. Bush and Dick Cheney just a few feet away, he minced few words in calling for a different way of operating.

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," he said. "Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world and we will not give them up for expedience's sake."

Those and other pointed comments rang as a decided rebuke to yesterday's men, who tried to set up a black hole of executive imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, authorized waterboarding, and declared that other countries were either for us or against us in the fight against terror.

Domestically, Obama braced the nation for the bad times that lie ahead, warning that our challenges "will not be met easily or in a short span of time."

That may be an understatement. As far as new presidents go, Obama must confront the worst economic problems since FDR took over during the Great Depression, and the worst foreign policy situation since Richard Nixon became president during the Vietnam War, says Garrison Nelson, professor of political science at the University of Vermont.

But other parts of Obama's message may prove too optimistic. Obama prides himself on being a transcender of things, and yesterday he tried to recast old ideological arguments in pragmatic terms. The question is not whether government is too large or too small, but whether it works, he said. The issue isn't whether the market is a force for good or ill, but how to keep a watchful eye for abuses, while broadening opportunity.

In the same vein, he talked about changing the hyper-partisanship of Washington. "On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics," he said.

Other presidents have also tried to take ideology out of politics and to establish more civil discourse, with little luck. Real ideological differences won't simply disappear and attempts to set a new tone rarely change the old tone for long.

In that light, the new president's best prescription for governing may well be that classic from presidential scholar Richard Neustadt: A president succeeds by persuading other actors that what he wants is also in their best interests.

On an overarching note, the historic nature of inaugurating the nation's first African-American president was much remarked upon in yesterday's coverage and the symbolism of that is truly moving.

But it's the individual qualities Obama radiates that make this American most hopeful.

A formidable intellect, he's a politician who's not afraid to show his intelligence. Rather than playing to the cheap seats, he talks to the nation as though he sees his countrymen as intelligent adults. Nor does he seem to be a president who will let ideology blind him to complexity. He's quick to spot a mistake and flexible enough to reverse course rather than dig in. And he understands the value of compromise.

Those are qualities that should serve us all well as he tries to put the nation back on course.

Scot Lehigh can be reached at lehigh@globe.com.