Barack Obama Channeled Past Presidents, But Still Has Much to Learn

Tuesday, as Barack Obama became the first African-American President, the shadows of great Americans stood watch among the millions who gathered on the National Mall.

Lincoln, who delivered black Americans from slavery, was evident as President Obama rested his hand on the same Bible that the 16th President used to take the oath of office in 1861.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hovered above as President Obama referenced his unlikely journey to the Oval Office as "a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."

President Obama's call for "a new era of responsibility," was reminiscent of Kennedy, while the words of the 35th President could also be heard in both Obama's outstretched hand to the Muslim world and his words of defiance to America's enemies.

But as the country finds itself in the midst of a calamitous economic downturn and a series of challenges that offer no quick solutions, it was the shadow of Franklin Roosevelt that perhaps loomed the largest. Still, while Obama evoked FDR's sense of urgency and optimism, he lacked the past President's clarity and vigor.

Just as FDR spoke at his first inaugural of the need to "act quickly" in a "disciplined attack upon our common problems," there was in Obama's speech a call to action in confronting America's vast challenges; and a pointed shot across the bow to the "recriminations and worn-out dogmas" of Washington's stale politics.

What was lacking in Obama's words was a sense of how he hoped to achieve this goal.

President Obama has long been depicted as pragmatic; one who will listen to all sides in order to ensure he reaches the best possible result. But if ever a moment lent itself to a clearer description of the reform path that Obama plans to take, it was yesterday. Instead of pledging a new burst of activist government, or disparaging the "anything goes" mentality that brought us to the depths of today's crisis, President Obama fell back on generalities and platitudes.

Inaugural speeches are not like campaign speeches, which maintain a competitive tension as they contrast two distinct visions about America. And few politicians have been as effective on the campaign trail at mining that essential conflict as Barack Obama.

It was that tension that was lacking yesterday. Instead of making a Rooseveltian pledge to see the "money changers" thrust from the temple, Obama offered a more milquetoast path.

He said, "The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." Well, yes and no. Clearly a man who believes that an $800 billion stimulus package is necessary believes that government is not only too small, but that it is not playing its proper role in the lives of the American people. It's a point that merited greater explanation.

In 1933, Roosevelt said he would "wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." In 1961, John F. Kennedy demanded of the American people, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

There was no similar language in Obama's speech yesterday. Perhaps his pragmatic, earnest and unifying approach is what we should come to expect: a reminder that one campaigns in poetry and governs in prose. But oration is not governing, and there is a difference between what you do and what you say.

Presidential leadership is, after all, about more than bringing the country together in times of national crisis; it's also about leading the way forward and directing the country down the right path. It goes to show that a politician perhaps more qualified than any other to lead this country at this moment, still has a few lessons to learn.