‘Begin again the remaking of America’

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Promising a “new era of responsibility,” Barack Hussein Obama Tuesday took the oath as the 44th president and first black commander-in-chief, telling a vast throng gathered to watch history that the country’s enduring strengths are more than equal to the grave challenges of the day.

On a cold, sunny, precedent-shattering January day, Mr. Obama acknowledged the scope of the crises facing the country as he takes office, but expressed confidence in the country’s ability to rise again to the task at hand.

“Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and begin again the work of remaking America,” Mr. Obama declared moments after being sworn in by Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts at 12:05 p.m. “For everywhere you look, there is work to be done.”

RELATED STORY:Text of Obama’s speech.

“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task,” Mr. Obama said.

Mr. Obama, a one-term senator from Illinois, takes office at a time of economic hardship at home and two inconclusive wars abroad. His formal inauguration marked the shattering stereotypes even as he uttered an oath as old as the republic itself.

Perhaps reflecting gravity of the moment, both Mr. Obama and Chief Justice Roberts stumbled slightly over the text of the 37-word oath.

Mr. Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. were sworn in on the West Front of the Capitol, with new first lady Michelle Obama, daughters Malia and Sasha, outgoing President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney among those seated nearby.

After the ceremonies, Mr. Obama walked now ex-President Bush and wife Laura to a waiting military helicopter as they begin their journey back to Texas and then proceeded to a lunch in his honor at Statuary Hall inside the Capitol building. Greeted by another rendition of “Hail to the Chief,” Mr. Obama greeted friends and former Senate colleagues, but did not issue any remarks before the accompanying reporters were sent away.

After the lunch, the new president was to review the troops on the Capitol’s East Front before traveling back down Pennsylvania Avenue with his family to the reviewing stand by the White House for the inaugural parade.

In his invocation, Pastor Rick Warren of California’s Saddleback Church called the day a “hinge-point of history with the inauguration of the first African-American president.”

In his speech, Mr. Obama offered a sobering account of the country’s economic and foreign policy perils, while repeatedly recalling the previous generations of Americans had faced equally critical challenges and persevered.

“That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood,” the new president said. “Our nation is at war, against a far-reaching network of violence and hatred. Our economy is badly weakened, a consequence of greed and irresponsibility on the part of some, but also our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age.”

Beyond the problems of the moment, he said, was something “no less measurable but no less profound — a sapping of confidence across our land, a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable and that the next generation must lower its sights.”

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