Democrats took heart from four national opinion polls which show that despite the bounce caused by interest in Mrs Palin, Mr McCain now leads by an average of just 1.6 points, his smallest margin since the Republican convention.

The latest polls come amid a flurry of critical news reports into Mrs Palin which cast doubt on some of her claims to be a squeaky clean reformist. Senator McCain's claims that his running mate had not sought special interest funding from Congress have been shown ( Read more... )
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Suited but not booted

Alaskan retailers lucky enough to have Sarah Palin's patronage are boasting. The mother of five went shopping with her 14-year-old daughter Willow recently at an Anchorage second-hand shop, Out of the Closet. She picked up an Escada tweed jacket for herself, The Wall Street Journal revealed, and a Juicy Couture coat for Willow. "Go Girl! We love seeing you in your Out of the Closet duds!" screams the store's website now. But not everyone ( Read more... )
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The Democratic presidential candidate said he was not blaming Mr McCain in person for "the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression" , but "the economic philosophy he subscribes to," based on tax cuts for the wealthy and the habit of "ignoring economic problems until they spiralled into crises".

During the Bush years, that philosophy insisted that "even commonsense regulations are unneccessary and unwise", with the result that the administration had sat on its hands as problems turned into crises – the latest being the convulsions on Wall Street.

Whatever its ultimate consequences, the crisis now shaking Wall Street seems bound to lead to greater federal government regulation of the financial sector, whoever wins the presidency in November.

And while the political fallout of the turmoil was not immediately clear, the more painful the effects of the upheavals on the wider economy the greater the impact will be on the election campaigns.

On past precedent, the crisis should work to the advantage of the Democrats, as the party out of power and thus not "responsible" for the crisis – and as the party with the reputation of having the economic interests of ordinary Americans at heart, rather than a favoured few.

However, as much as Mr McCain's handlers like to project him as an anti-establishment rebel, the Republicans have always been seen as the party of corporate America and of Wall Street, for whose current plight public sympathy is zero. With both campaigns now under pressure to produce detailed plans to tackle the crisis, the Arizona senator's admission that economic matters were not his strong suit may also come back to haunt him.

Even before the demise of Lehman Brothers, both candidates had come out against a federal bailout for the stricken investment bank, arguing the notion of "moral hazard" must be returned to financial markets.

But trapped between his support of most of Mr Bush's policies, including the $1.6 trillion of tax cuts, and his need to distance himself from a desperately unpopular administration, Mr McCain confined his fire to the excesses of the banks and investment houses, leaving the sharper attack to his Democrat rival.

The Lehman bankruptcy, Mr McCain said, was but "the latest reminder of ineffective regulation and management" that plagued the financial sector. A McCain-Palin White House would replace the "outdated and ineffective patchwork quilt of regulatory oversight in Washington" and bring "transparency and accountability to Wall Street".

That certainly is what Americans want. Well before the Wall Street debacle, polls showed the political pendulum shifting leftward, and away from Mr Reagan's famous crack about how the nine most terrifying words in the English language were, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help".

At the time, the president venerated by Republicans more than any other, caught the mood of the country – so much so that even Bill Clinton, the last Democrat to occupy the White House, declared that "the age of Big Government is over".

Now however, with inflation eating into pay packets, jobs disappearing and recession at the door, the notion of government that helps is back – and as the party identified with activist government, the Democrats and Mr Obama should be the beneficiaries.

Indeed, events have forced even the anti-regulatory and anti-interventionist Bush administration to change tack, with a $150bn (£84bn) stimulus package earlier this year to boost the economy, and assistance for some of the millions of Americans facing the loss of their homes to foreclosure. The scope of the measures has been criticised, but the change of direction is indisputable. The Obama campaign yesterday ridiculed John McCain's prescriptions for the economic crisis as "disturbingly out of touch" after he remarked during a campaign stop in Florida that he believed the economic "fundamentals" were sound, but promising he would "never put America in this position again".

A Democratic spokes-man replied: "Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his 26 years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created a historic economic crisis".

But the crisis could also help Mr McCain – even as its focus moves back to Wall Street. Mr McCain's post-convention "bounce" has given him a lift on economic issues too. In the summer, Mr Obama led by 15 points when voters were asked who they trusted best to handle the economy. Today, with the two candidates level in the polls, that advantage has shrunk to five points or less.

If the economic turmoil worsens, Mr McCain's strongest selling point, his battle-testedness under fire, may help. Voters could decide Mr Obama is too inexperienced to take office at a time of economic peril.

Making his first appearance in the East Room of the White House, Mr Obama said he was instructing the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a Bush administration ruling that blocked a Californian request to impose more restrictive emissions limits on light vehicles.

It seems all but certain that the agency will give California a waiver to allow it to impose standards tougher than those set at federal level. At least 13 other states, including New York and New Jersey, would likely follow suit.

The action clearly aimed to send the message that Mr Obama will be embracing environmental activism with an enthusiasm not seen at the top of US government for eight years, perhaps ever. And he cast the message not just in terms of protecting the planet but also of national and economic security.

"It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs," he said. Initiatives to make the US energy-independent – an ambitious, if not pie-in-the-sky, goal – form part of the $825bn (£590bn) economic stimulus plan Mr Obama is trying to sell to Congress, against some resistance.

With yesterday's televised ceremony, Mr Obama also sent a message to his allies that the years of America playing coy with international efforts to cap emissions and combat global warming, if not obstructing them, are over.

"We will make it clear to the world that American is ready to lead," he said as his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, was preparing to appoint a new special envoy for climate change.

The job will go to Todd Stern, who advised the former president Bill Clinton on global warming and was closely involved in the Kyoto treaty and Buenos Aires climate-change negotiations. "The days of Washington dragging its heels are over. My administration will not deny facts. We will be guided by them," Mr Obama said, a reference to the record of the Bush White House, which queried the link drawn by scientists between climate change and human activity and resisted calls for a global regime of emissions ceilings.

"For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change," Mr Obama said.

Tilting at Mr Bush has become a hallmark of the Obama presidency. Even before his first week in office is over, he has repudiated his predecessor's policies by moving to close Guantanamo Bay, reinstate curbs on torture, close secret CIA prisons and resume aid to family planning groups abroad that accept abortion. On car emissions, he said Washington had "stood in the way" of California which has long taken the lead in the US in pushing to curb air pollution and emissions. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had written to Mr Obama on his swearing-in asking him to free California to move forward with the caps.

Mr Obama also ordered the transport department yesterday to issue by March the regulations that will help the car industry to meet a law passed by Congress last year designed to increase the miles-per-gallon standards on new cars in time for the 2011 model year.

The Bush administration had neglected to work on the specific regulations, without which it would have been difficult to enact the law, which intends to enforce a 40 per cent improvement in mileage performance in cars by 2020.

Regarding California's initiative, the Bush White House took the view that allowing states to set their own emissions standards would create a messy patchwork of regulations across the country, making it harder for the car manufacturers to comply.

Mr Obama's decision was seen by some as creating a further burden for the struggling Detroit car industry. California's proposed restrictions would force car-makers to undertake a complete retooling to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent in new cars and light trucks by 2016.

The Ohio senator George Voinovich said: "I am fearful that today's action will begin the process of setting the American auto industry back even further. The federal government should not be piling on an industry already hurting in a time like this."

Environmental lobby groups praised Mr Obama. "By beginning this process and directing [the environmental protection agency] to review the Bush administration's lack of action, President Obama is turning the federal government into a force for positive change instead of a roadblock," the Sierra Club said.

Meanwhile, the Senate last night confirmed Timothy Geithner, the former head of the New York City Federal Reserve branch, to be Mr Obama’s Treasury Secretary in a 60-34 vote. It had been one of Mr Obama’s most troubled nominations: Mr Geithner had been criticised for failing earlier to pay some taxes, which have now been paid.

Hijacking the Obama brand? Yes, we can

Everywhere you look in America Obama's image, campaign theme, slogans and logos have been shamelessly hijacked. Obama's words are on the side of buses and even on the back of metro tickets. Ikea tells us that "Change Begins at Home". There's an Obama hope-and-change necklace, as well as Obama toilet paper and soaps. The most egregious hijacker of the brand is Pepsi which has even nicked his red-white-and-blue yin-yang logo. Pepsi's adverts, plastered on the sides of buses, are peppered with words like "hope" and "optimism". Tonight Pepsi is helping to fund the Hollywood Creative Coalition's inaugural ball.

'Grassroots' head to the greatest party on Earth

*The disadvantaged and homeless have been pouring into Washington from all corners of America, determined to be part of the greatest free party on the planet. Thanks to Earl Stafford, below, a local businessman, and various charities, they've come by bus, plane and car, although some may have jumped freight trains Woody Guthrie-style. Walking across the marble floor of the Marriott Hotel, two minutes from the White House, Prince Brooks, a 57-year-old homeless veteran, said to himself: "Prince you are stepping up!" Along with other members of the "grassroots" he is attending the unofficial People's Inaugural Ball. There was pandemonium as organisers handed out hundreds of ball gowns, tuxedos and donated pairs of shoes. The only question was whether the Community Organiser-in-Chief Obama will grace them with his presence.

Even the most innocent unscripted deviation from routine will have the Secret Service protectors quivering with anxiety. For these latter, in an ideal world, America's First Family would not set foot outside the building throughout their entire time there. For Barack, Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama, the most precious commodity these next four or eight years will be normality.

They will find it, if anywhere, on the second and third floors of the executive residence, the classically styled white porticoed mansion the world knows as the White House. That, for the Obamas, will be home. The West Wing, made famous by the TV series and site of the Oval Office, is a smaller, two-storey building linked to the mansion by a colonnaded walk. On the other side is the East Wing, housing the Office of the First Lady.

Every president divides his working day differently. George Bush was an early-to-rise, early-to-bed creature of habit, waking at 5.30am, up at 6am and in the Oval Office for his daily intelligence briefing an hour later. He could eat in his private dining room (simple fare like hamburgers and salad) or even at his desk. By 5.30pm he'd be home, for a quiet dinner, perhaps some TV or a movie, before bed by 10pm at the latest.

Bill Clinton was the opposite, a later riser who got going as the day progressed. Bush always wore a suit and tie to work. Clinton's White House, in the early days at least, was a place of jeans and brainstorming sessions, fuelled by pizza and phone calls deep into the night. Ronald Reagan's day started at nine and ended at five. The ultimate presidential minimalist, however, was Calvin Coolidge in the 1920s, who took a regular afternoon nap – from which he was wont to wake and sarcastically inquire: "Is the country still there?"

But for all of them, refuge was back on the second and third floors of the mansion. An estate agents' brochure would make it seem a standard home for a corporate hotshot: drawing room (the Yellow Oval Room), two/three sitting rooms, dining room and six bedrooms, plus the Truman balcony with its stunning views, where Obama will be able to sneak a cigarette, or even a quick indulgence in his officially proscribed BlackBerry. And that's just the second floor. The third has a solarium, games room, linen room and another small sitting room (which the outgoing Bush used for workouts).

That bare description, however, only hints at the amenities on hand. One hundred staff, including five full-time chefs, are at the disposal of this particular chief executive and his family. On top of this, Obama will have his mother-in-law, the 71-year-old Marian Robinson, living with them. Endless fodder for jokes, of course, but she'll be another bastion of normality, helping to look after the girls and the as yet unacquired First Puppy. The Obamas will have a private theatre (all deep red with soft chairs you could drown in) at which the movie of their choice will be shown, if necessary before general release, and where he can practise for a presidential debate, or rehearse a State of the Union address. And if you're president, not only can you invite movie stars in person, they come running.

Michelle, furthermore, has a $150,000 (£102,000) budget to redecorate the private quarters as she pleases, to make it feel more like home. Question: will she remove the plasma television in the Lincoln Bedroom, where favoured guests of the First Family stay?

And even before the makeover, the Obamas will lack for nothing. In her 1989 memoir, My Turn, Nancy Reagan gave a flavour of living there. "Every evening, while I took a bath, one of the maids would come by and remove my clothes for laundering or dry cleaning. Five minutes after Ronnie came home and hung up his suit, it would disappear to be pressed, cleaned or brushed."

These days, 21st-century communications have made a president's existence busier and more stressful. Earlier presidents have had a putting green, swimming pool, bowling lane or horseshoe pit put in to relax them. Obama famously has mused about getting a basketball court. More probably, though, as the first genuinely urban president in years, he'll try to get out on the town, and visit Washington neighbourhoods – that is, of course, if his Secret Service detail lets him.

The President-elect picked up a paintbrush for a burst of painting at a shelter for homeless and runaway teenagers. He told Americans that he needs their help to confront the nation's problems, as he and his family joined the family of Vice-President-elect Joe Biden at a community centre in Washington. With eager crowds pouring into Washington for America's version of a coronation, Mr Obama also took part in solemn ceremonies honouring the civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

Today's ceremonies and celebrations are expected to be attended by between one and three million people. US Air Force jets will patrol the skies overhead, and more security forces are on the ground and water for some of the tightest security ever seen in the capital. It is four decades since King, who preached racial harmony, was cut down by an assassin's bullet in 1968. The crowds are expected to fill the National Mall, a vast open area surrounded by war memorials, museums and other monuments. Tens of thousands more will be lining the parade route to the White House, hoping Mr Obama emerges from his limousine to walk at least some of the route.

Mr Obama, 47, sent millions of emails to Americans encouraging them to help out in more than 11,000 projects across the country as a way of marking the federal holiday.

"Given the crisis that we're in and the hardships that so many people are going through, we can't allow any idle hands," Mr Obama said. "Everybody is going to have to pitch in, and I think the American people are ready to do that. Don't underestimate the power for people to join together and to accomplish amazing things," he added, as he worked on a boys' dormitory room.

His wife, Michelle, and Mr Biden's wife, Jill, took their daughters to another site to prepare care packages for troops overseas. The organisers were expecting 14,000 volunteers working in shifts to assemble 75,000 packages for soldiers in one day.

The coincidence of a national holiday honouring Martin Luther King occurring within a day of Mr Obama's inauguration has only added to the deep symbolism of today's events, in which a black man will be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol and receive the keys to the White House. Both buildings were constructed with slave labour. The city was in a reflective mood for the annual King holiday, which underscored the racial barriers Mr Obama overcame to be elected the first African American president.

He faces daunting challenges as soon as he is sworn in, including two wars and the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.

In one of the first acts of his presidency, Mr Obama is expected to announce an orderly withdrawal of US forces from Iraq. The visit to soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital paved the way for a series of momentous decisions in the coming days.

"Today, we celebrate the life of a preacher who, more than 45 years ago, stood on our national mall in the shadow of Lincoln and shared his dream for our nation," Mr Obama said in a statement. "Tomorrow, we will come together as one people on the same mall where Dr King's dream echoes still. As we do, we recognise that here in America, our destinies are inextricably linked. We resolve that as we walk, we must walk together."

Members of Mr Obama's new administration are preparing to hit the ground running for the first day of official business tomorrow. At the White House yesterday, Bush administration staffers were busy packing up. The President has kept a low profile since his final 13-minute address to the nation last Thursday.

But he took time for some farewell calls with world leaders, including Gordon Brown, Israel's President Shimon Peres, the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as well as President Dmitry Medvedev. He also spoke to Georgia's President Mikheil Saakashvili and the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of the closest allies of his troubled presidency.

For Mr Bush's final official act, he will formally welcome Mr Obama to the White House today and then accompany him to the swearing-in, before flying off to retirement in Texas. Mr Bush's approval ratings are the lowest of any recent president, and several some historians have branded his presidency as the worst ever.

With Mr Obama's approval, one of President Bush's final acts was to name the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, as the Cabinet member who will remain far from today's Inauguration Day festivities in a safe place, ensuring continuity of government in case of disaster.

America passes the baton: How the day unfolds

11am (4pm GMT)

After a morning church service, Barack Obama arrives at the White House to share coffee and niceties with President George Bush. Soon after, both men will share a car for the ride up Pennsylvania to Capitol Hill in time for the beginning of the inauguration ceremonies.

11.30am

On the west front of the US Capitol, Senator Dianne Feinstein will issue a call to order before the Rev Rick Warren gives the invocation. Aretha Franklin will then perform before the swearing in of Joe Biden as Vice-President. Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma will lead a performance of music by John Williams.

Noon

Barack Hussein Obama will be sworn in by Chief Justice John Roberts. George Bush's term officially expires.

12.05pm

Obama will deliver his inaugural address to assembled dignitaries, 240,000 ticket holders and a sea of citizens before him down the entire length of the Mall. President Obama will escort former president George Bush and Laura Bush to the west front of the Capitol and a waiting Marine One helicopter, which will lift them up and away to Andrews Air Force base for a flight to Texas and retirement.

1pm

The President is then escorted to Statuary Hall in the US Capitol for the inaugural luncheon, a tradition dating back to 1897. The first course will be served on replicas of the china from the Lincoln Presidency. On the menu: seafood stew, followed by "a brace of American birds" (pheasant and duck) served with molasses, sweet potatoes and apple cinnamon sponge cake.

2.30pm

Obama joins the inauguration parade that will sweep him down Pennsylvania Avenue towards his new home, the White House. It is expected that he will step out of his limousine to walk part of the way. Up to 2.5 million cheering people will line the route.

Alexander, now 46 and a professor at Yale University, was born in Harlem but grew up in Washington. Teaching at the University of Chicago in the early 1990s, she befriended a young colleague who, last month, invited her to perform at his big party: Barack Obama.

Alexander has dropped a few hints about the likely style of her unaugural verse, saying that the public poems that appeal to her "have a sense of focus and a kind of gravitas, an ability to appeal to larger issues without getting corny". Among the poets she's been reading for guidance are Auden, Hughes, Heaney – and Virgil. Last week, she explained in the US press: "When I compose poems, I don't think themes, I begin with language. I do believe that form and function are united... But I don't start with an idea that I wish to express in poetry." She hopes that poetry's place – for only the fourth time – in the inauguration rites may clear a space for thought amid the pomp, a "contemplative moment in the midst of this grand occasion".

Since her first collection, The Venus Hottentot in 1990, Alexander has emerged through volumes such as Antebellum Dream Book and American Sublime as a widely acclaimed poet not just of the African-American experience – although that often fires her work – but of the hybrid nation that Obama recruited so effectively. Jackie Kay, a poet of Scottish and Nigerian descent who is herself no stranger to the challenge of performing, calls Alexander "a perfect choice for Obama's inauguration"; a "wonderful poet" whose work "shows that ideas need to live in lively language". Kay finds a parallel between the poet's and politician's style of storytelling: "Obama's political success so far has been because he has brilliantly focused on the smaller details. He will have chosen Alexander because her poetry does just that, tells a huge story through the accumulation of particular moments".

Democracies tend to do the big words for big events rather badly – perhaps reassuringly so, if you trace the kinship of rhetorical grandeur and despotic terror from Caesar to Hitler. Yet, 48 years ago, president-elect John F Kennedy decided that a new phase of American liberty deserved to arrive garlanded not merely by bands and orations, but by poetry as well. He asked Robert Frost, by then 86 but still the craggy New England bard who had carved his homespun America in memorable verse for 60 years, to compose a poem for the Inauguration Day ceremonies in Washington. So Frost did – a dreadful patter of high-minded historical doggerel called "Dedication", awash with sentimental aspirations for "A golden age of poetry and power/ Of which this noonday's the beginning hour".

Then fate, or Frost's artistic unconscious, took a hand. The elderly poet found that, with the harsh glint of January sun on snow, he couldn't read his script. So instead he recited his "The Gift Outright", which begins: "The land was ours before we were the land's". It's a terrific poem about the birth of national identity in hardship and conflict, but one that unselfconsciously takes Frost's ancestry of Yankee pioneers as the folk whose story lies at America's heart.

But the Inauguration Day poem did not find a fixed niche in the handover calendar. The custom lapsed until Bill Clinton revived it in 1993, and picked the antithesis of Frost: Maya Angelou, revered memoirist of harsh times and high hopes. Her poem, "On the Pulse of Morning", saluted, ploddingly and with risky half-rhymes, a rainbow nation ("the Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek/ The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh") as it made its peace with the ravaged and conquered American land: "History, despite its wrenching pain,/ Cannot be unlived, and if faced/ With courage, need not be lived again".

For his second inauguration in 1997, Clinton unearthed a poet from his home state of Arkansas – Miller Williams – who also happened to be the father of a country-music legend, Lucinda Williams, a gifted lyricist herself. Williams' "Of History and Hope" falls prey, like Angelou's poem and Frost's original text, to a kind of sonorous tautology: "We mean to be the people we meant to be/ to keep on going where we meant to go".

What kind of poem might best fill that vast inaugural stage? For Kay, "an intimate poem will work best, as Obama's story of the lifespan of 106-year-old Ann Nixon Cooper captured our imagination in his luminous acceptance speech". Other British poets look on with mingled scepticism and encouragement. Ian McMillan, perhaps the best-loved of British public bards today, says: "An inauguration poem can't be small in any way. It can incorporate intimate moments, domestic images, fleeting memories, but it has to be like a political speech in that it must be based on rhythm, on repetition, on phrases that can be manipulated and spoken again and again. It has to be a poem from an oral tradition and not from a written one."

Multiple award-winner Sean O'Brien warns that "it's very difficult to align the imagination with public events to order. There's no guarantee that a real poem will emerge, however much the occasion deserves it and the poet desires it. But it's worth trying". And Ruth Padel notes that "one person's platitude will be another's revelatory insight", but stresses that "good poetry is all about risk. You want to say what has not been said before: you might fall flat on your face, you might find something new and wonderful – and the line between those is drawn in watery sand".

Should we have such public moments of poetry here – beyond the traditional Laureate's duty to mark royal hatchings, matchings and dispatchings? The office of the presidency, if not its execution, unites Americans as not even monarchy can do here. Padel points out: "There are very few things that draw a huge population like Britain's together in such a way that they can all accept that offering in the same way." In ancient Athens, she notes, citizens sought illumination on public issues not from one single laureate but from the competing insights of the great poet-dramatists: dialectic, not declamation. Besides, "nowadays there are so many other things competing with that traditional role of verse, which is to give people words with which to do their own reflecting on events: TV, pop, the opinion column. This has made poetry go much more private. The challenge is to find a new way of doing it".

O'Brien worries about poetry-haters: "There is also the question of the readiness of readers to engage with what may be a very occasional and uneasy experience, that of reading a poem at all. And we all know what fears and aggro that can produce."

Picked to speak the words that will lead America from one age to another, Elizabeth Alexander, wisely gave little away beforehand. She dutifully noted that her "joy" at landing this job from the president-elect stems from "my deep respect for him as a man of meaningful, powerful words that move us forward". Listeners who hope for upbeat crowd-pleasing may wince at her statement that "poetry is not meant to cheer; rather, poetry challenges, and moves us towards transformation". But all will welcome one firm steer about today's verse: "I won't carry on at length."

Presidential odes: Excerpts from former Inauguration Day poems

The Gift Outright, for John F. Kennedy, 1961, by Robert Frost

The land was ours before we were the land's.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England's, still colonials...

(NB from the poem Frost recited from memory, not the one he had written for the occasion)

On the Pulse of Morning, for Bill Clinton, 1993, by Maya Angelou

You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot...

You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought

Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare

Praying for a dream.

Here, root yourselves beside me.

I am the Tree planted by the River,

Which will not be moved.

Of History and Hope, for Bill Clinton, 1997, by Miller Williams

We have memorised America,

how it was born and who we have been and where.

In ceremonies and silence we say the words,

telling the stories, singing the old songs.

We like the places they take us. Mostly we do.

The great and all the anonymous dead are there.

We know the sound of all the sounds we brought.

From 'Ars Poetica: #100. I Believe', 2005, by Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry is what you find

in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God

in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.

Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,

and I'm sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)

is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?

But today at noon, beneath the western front of the Capitol, a truly extraordinary event will take place. Forecasters say the temperature will struggle to reach freezing, as this slender, almost delicate, figure whose name was virtually unknown five years ago, is sworn in as the 44th president of the United States.

But any meteorological chill will be banished by the human warmth, exuding from a million souls or more crammed on the Mall in Washington listening to him, and from maybe billions more around the world watching on television. For one day at least, and however irrationally, relief will replace fear, and gloom will be swept aside by a vast tide of hope.

The anticipation that stretches from America's capital to almost every corner of the earth has many reasons. One of the worst and most unpopular presidents in US history is departing. There is a sense of new beginning, of fresh new energies brought to bear on the enormous problems of the hour. But the most remarkable thing is the most obvious. The most powerful man in the world, the man who steps into the shoes of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan is black.

Today in one sense is a destination, the end of a journey lasting 233 years, from the very foundation of a country with its own original sin of slavery. There have been many milestones along the road: among them emancipation, Jackie Robinson and the integration from 1947 of baseball which truly was then the national pastime. Then came the 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Brown vs Board of Education, that desegregated America's schools, followed by the great civil rights acts of the 1960s.

The dream set out 45 years ago by Martin Luther King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial – at the opposite end of the Washington Mall from where Mr Obama will speak today – may not have been entirely realised. The colour of a person's skin still does matter in America – but how far America has come.

One goes back to that imploring cry of another King, the black motorist Rodney King whose arrest and beating by Los Angeles police officers in 1991 marked one recent nadir of race relations here. "Can't we all get along?" he pleaded as race riots later swept his city.

This week, everyone is getting along. Sunday's concert, at the spot where Martin Luther King spoke, was a festival in which colour did not matter. And today, a black man will issue the inaugural summons – to his own race, to whites, to Hispanics and to every other fragment of America's ethnic mosaic. And it seems the most natural thing in the world. This may not quite be a post-racial country yet. But Obama is a post-racial president, a black man who won a greater share of the white vote than John Kerry, the last Democratic candidate for the White House in 2004. And his election may be only the beginning. He is the most prominent member of a younger generation of black politicians, some of them mayors and governors, who did not grow up during the civil rights struggle. Like Obama, they won election by appealing to white voters. His advent thus marks another milestone. Race remains a factor in American politics. But it is no longer a decisive one.

And why should it be, considering the importance of the moment? No matter who took the oath of office today, he or she would be doing so at a watershed in American history. The conservative Republicanism dominant here since Reagan was elected in 1980, has run its course.

Obama has a chance to usher in an equally long Democratic era. Government is back in fashion, and so is "progressive" thinking – to use the vogue word for a liberalism that for three decades here has been ashamed to speak its name. But the changes run far deeper than even politics. The 44th president is coming to power at the most critical economic juncture in 80 years. The task of his administration is no less than to reinvent American capitalism. This will involve far more than the $800bn stimulus package that Congress will soon pass. It will also require a complete overhaul of the financial markets, and of the American ways of health care, energy consumption and education.

Eight years from now (or four if everything goes dreadfully wrong) historians will be debating the Obama legacy. By then race may be the least significant component of it. No matter the colour of his skin, the weight of expectation that will settle on his shoulders at noon today is more than any single individual should be asked to carry – even the leader of the most powerful country on earth.

But if Obama truly places the US on a new course, he will be remembered alongside Washington, Lincoln, and FDR as one of the greatest presidents. If not, he will go down as one more failure. Whether he was white or black will have been irrelevant.

Abraham Lincoln is the patron saint of this inauguration, like Obama a man from Illinois, the president who liberated the slaves to whose race the soon-to-be 44th president belongs. But the setting for Malia's remark was as least as intimidating as it was inspirational. Engraved on the Memorial's inner wall, alongside the brooding statue of the great man, is his second inaugural address – 703 words long – and the gold standard against which the addresses of every President are now judged, and invariably found wanting. But if ever America needed one to match it, is is now.

This is surely the most keenly awaited inaugural speech in modern US history, perhaps ever. It will be delivered by a man renowned for his exceptional eloquence, at a moment when not just America but the world is looking for a giant pick-me-up, in the depths of the biggest economic crisis in 80 years. Its global audience probably will run into the billions, hanging on its every word.

Oddly, it is nowhere written in the constitution that an incoming president must make such a speech. But in 1789, after he became the first president to be sworn into office, George Washington decided he'd better deliver one anyway – and like most things decided by Washington it became a precedent set in stone.

In fact, those early inaugurals were above all designed to be read. They would set out the beliefs and broad political intentions of a president, and his generally ponderous reflections on the age. Only when it could not be avoided – such as with Lincoln's addresses, both overshadowed by the Civil War – did they address specific issues in detail. To this day, most of them haven't been very good, and almost none have changed history. However irrationally, this time people are expecting both from Barack Obama.

Obama's team of speechwriters, led by 27-year-old Jon Favreau, has been working on the address for more than a month. David Axelrod, Obama's chief political adviser, has been closely involved too, along with, obviously, the soon-to-be 44th president himself. It has gone through at least three drafts since Favreau began the process, jotting down ideas at his flat, and in sessions at a downtown Starbucks.

The speech will last 15 to 20 minutes, and is likely to dwell on such themes as responsibility and the country's need to return to its founding values. It will pull no punches either. "If you play it straight with them, if you explain to them ... then I have enormous confidence that the American people will rise to the challenge," Obama said in a recent interview.

There will be less of the sermonising about liberty in which George Bush indulged. In all likelihood, there will be echoes of the speech that turned Obama into a national figure: his keynote address at the 2004 Democratic convention, in which he extolled the country's diversity, but stressed that for all their differences Americans are a single people with a shared purpose.

Appeals to unity have been a stock ingredient of inaugurals: the first President Bush spoke of the "age of the offered hand," and in his second inaugural in 1997, Bill Clinton vowed that the White House and Congress should be "repairers of the breach". But these urgings had little effect. This time however is different, and Americans are in the mood to listen.

A 15-minute speech would be about par for the recent inaugural course. Predictably in a nation besotted by statistics, even inaugurals have been distilled to mere numbers. The average length of all 56 of them is 2,630 words, but of late they've been shorter, at between 1,500 and 2,000 words. The longest was that of William Henry Harrison, at 8,445 words. The shortest was George Washington's second in 1793, consisting of just 135 words. In his lone inaugural in 1797, John Adams, the second president, produced a single sentence of a mindboggling 737 words.

Warren Harding in 1921 was the first president to deliver his speech through loudspeakers. Calvin Coolidge's address in 1925 was the first broadcast by radio. That of Harry Truman in 1949 was the first to be televised, while Bill Clinton's second address in 1997 was the first to go out on the internet. A President's first inaugural address tends to be better than his second one – with Lincoln's second in 1865 being the exception. Brevity helps too; as Richard Nixon observed, "only the short ones are remembered".

Mostly, alas, they are dross. At the moment of delivery, an inaugural might sound like a text brought from the mountain by Moses in person. A quarter of an hour later, though, it is usually hard to remember a word of them.

But every so often there's a line that, for better or worse, catches the spirit of an era. "Government is not the solution to our problems," declared Ronald Reagan in 1981, at the first inaugural ceremony to be held on the west front of the Capitol, looking down over the Mall and the heart of the imperial city. Before, they took place on the building's east side, facing towards the Supreme Court. A similar moment came in 2005, when George Bush proclaimed America's "ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our time".

Today, government is looking like the only solution to the financial crisis, while Bush has bequeathed to posterity unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a world in which tyranny if anything is once again on the advance. The younger Bush's second effort may go down as the apogee of the hubristic inaugurals, in which America asserted it had the power, the right and the moral standing to make anything come to pass. It's a fair bet that some of Obama's words will live in history – but for very different reasons. Every incoming president studies the addresses of his predecessors, and three of them may influence Obama. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took power amid an economic slump even deeper than today's. In 1961, John Kennedy, like Obama, was young, charismatic and consciously turning a page in American history. Finally there's Abraham Lincoln, who became president as the country descended into civil war.

By no coincidence these three produced lines that echo down the ages. "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," said FDR, while Kennedy unforgettably demanded of his countrymen that they "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". None, however, surpasses Lincoln's second inaugural in 1865, delivered a month before he was assassinated.

"With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in," begins its peroration, in the rhythmic, haunting succintness that marked Lincoln as an orator. Afterwards, the Spectator magazine called the speech "the noblest political document known to history".

But these are the exceptions. In general, inaugurals have amounted to a little more than a collection of platitudes, wrapped in pseudo-ecclesiastical language. In 1993, Bill Clinton talked about celebrating "the mystery of American renewal," while born-again George Bush in 2001 made religion explicit: "We are not this story's author, who fills time and eternity with his purpose."

In other ways too, standards have been slipping. A study which measures inaugurals as reading aptitude tests, most were at university reading level until 1900. Now they are usually at high school level – or, in the case of George Bush Snr's one effort, barely sixth-grade, ie, suitable for the average 12-year-old.

There's nothing wrong with being accessible, of course. But Bush Senior turned simplicity into fatuity. "This is a time," he told his country in 1989, "when the future seems a door you can walk right through into a room called tomorrow". Deeper words than these have won the Eurovision Song Contest. Richard Nixon wasn't far behind either, with his 1969 observation that" the American Dream does not come to those who fall asleep".

To be fair, a lousy address doesn't necessarily portend a lousy presidency, nor does a soaring one guarantee a great presidency. Both speeches of Clinton, a generally successful president, sounded oddly flat. On the other hand, apart from that line about the American Dream, Nixon's two still read quite well. But it was he who 18 months after his second inaugural, resigned in disgrace over Watergate. But Harrison's fate was far worse, and far quicker. Back in 1841 Harrison spoke for an hour-and-three-quarters without a coat, on a cold, wet day. The next day he developed a cold which turned into pneumonia. A month later he was dead.

Words of wisdom: Lincoln's inauguration speech

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether'. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

2 At what time of day was he born?

3 By what first name was he known until he went to university?

4 We know that his father, Barack Obama Sr, comes from Kenya. But where does his mother, Ann, come from, and what's her connection with Jimmy Webb?

5 By what codename is he known to the US Secret Service?

6 Where does Obama stand politically on a) same-sex marriages; b) abortion; and c) the presence of the US military in Iraq?

7 What characteristic does he share with Paul McCartney, Kurt Cobain, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton?

8 The film to which Obama took his future wife Michelle on their first date was, oddly enough, about a really nice black guy trying to calm the tensions between mixed races and white police on the streets of Brooklyn. What was its name and who directed it?

9 What's his favourite book?

10 And his favourite movies? One features a black piano player, the other a 7ft-tall Native American.

11 In which illegal drugs did he indulge while a teenager?

12 From which university did he graduate with a law degree, in 1991?

13 Which famous Irish-American senator used to sit at the desk Obama occupied in the Senate?

14 In 2006, Obama won a Grammy award. For what?

15 How tall is he?

16 Why did he part company from the clergyman who married him and Michelle, and baptised their two children?

17 Which soul legend is scheduled to sing at the inauguration, and what connects the legend's father with Martin Luther King?

18 Why is Obama reluctant to eat ice cream?

19 Where does he have his hair cut, and how often?

20 With which Republican senator did Obama co-sponsor the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act in 2005?

21 What was it he told sloppy American teenagers to stop doing, shortly after becoming President-elect?

22 For which very visible public role did he apply while at Harvard, only to be turned down by an all-woman committee?

23 What speciality dish does he most like to cook?

24 In which European language (apart from English) is he fluent?

25 What's the name of his tailor, and how much do his suits cost?

26 Had he not become a lawyer and politician, what profession would Obama have pursued, according to himself?

27 What does "Barack" actually mean?

28 Which Japanese town had a special reason to go wild in the streets on 5 November 2008?

29 In which British magazine was he included as one of the "10 People Who Would Change the World"?

30 How does Obama make an appearance on the French TV show Les Guignols d'Info?

31 What became of his father?

32 What became of his mother?

33 About whom did Obama say during the presidential race: "I'm so over-exposed, I'm making ***** ****** look like a recluse."

34 What was the total amount of the publishers' advance paid to Obama for a three-book contract in 2004?

35 The death of which family member cast a shadow over his election triumph?

36 Between 1993 and 2004, Obama worked for the law firm Davis, Miner, Barnhill and Galland. In which branch of law did they specialise?

37 How many panic buttons will the new president have?

38 How large a budget will the Obamas be given to redecorate the White House to their own taste?

39 Which ocean-going perk will the Obamas enjoy?

40 What's he's wearing on his right wrist?

Even McCain voters are optimistic about Obama

The transition is almost over and although it has not been without the odd stumble, the popularity of Barack Obama seems only to have grown. A CNN-Opinion Research Corporation poll released yesterday suggests that the President-elect now enjoys an 84 per cent approval rating, up 5 points since the beginning of December. It also said that most Americans regard the inauguration as a rare opportunity for the country to come together. Even the occasional pothole along the road from Chicago to Washington, including the awkward proximity of the muck-spattered governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, has not dulled the halo. A separate New York Times-CBS News poll says that 79 per cent of Americans are optimistic about Obama's first term, including 58 per cent of those who voted for John McCain. All this giddiness means Mr Obama has further to fall once he starts governing. It is safe to assume that that change may take a little longer to deliver than advertised.

Comfort and vanity pale beside presidential safety

Oh, the myriad worries of Tuesday. What to wear at the swearing in – long-johns or no long-johns? How to travel – bus, underground or shoe leather? What to wear at the balls? Such questions of comfort and vanity may seem petty to the agencies for which only one thing matters: keeping the presidents – the 43rd and 44th – safe. Little has been left to chance. Two square miles around the Capitol have been fenced off. Anyone entering the Obama-zone will be screened and searched. Security cameras are everywhere, primed to relay live feeds to a Joint Operations Centre. The military will patrol the skies and the Potomac River and 4,000 DC police officers will be joined by another 4,000 from 99 departments in the region. And then there are the other security operations under the Secret Service that none of us will ever know about.

American capitalism cashes in on the party

The nation's capital is turning into a giant bazaar for all things Obama. Tuesday is the day the souvenir vendors hope to unload all those T-shirts and caps and squeeze their last dollars from Obama-mania. And who can blame them? But big corporations are jumping on the bandwagon too. Ikea, the house furnishing chain, has flooded the market with ads proclaiming "Change Begins at Home," while Pepsi has lined the city's underground platforms with posters bearing the words "Hope" and "Optimism", where the 'O's have been replaced by the company's logo. Who said capitalism is on the retreat?

Yet over the generations there have been first ladies who have revelled in their duties as mannequins for American designers, among them, of course, Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan. As next Tuesday's inauguration approaches, speculation about the gown Michelle Obama will pick for the inaugural ball is beyond fever pitch. Because while Tuesday is Barack Obama's big day, on Tuesday night all eyes will turn to his wife. Mrs Obama will be acutely aware that with this one fashion choice she is setting the tone for herself for the four years to come. Inaugural wardrobes and in particular inaugural ball gowns have come to be viewed almost as a reflection of America. As historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony told the Boston Herald last week: "They are symbols of our country. They reflect around the world an image of our country."

Plenty of former presidential wives have pulled it off on inauguration night, including Florence Harding (wife of Warren) who in 1921 donned an iridescent flapper number made of tulle and covered in sequins and beads. You can see it still at the Smithsonian Museum. Mrs Kennedy drew what she wanted – an ivory gown and cape – and took the design to Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan to have it made. She caused a sensation. Mrs Carter committed a faux pas appearing in a dress she had worn at both inaugurations of Jimmy Carter as governor of Georgia.

Mrs Reagan wore a glittery one-shouldered gown which many criticised as "too Hollywood" and too opulent looking for the 1981 recession. Hillary Clinton tried hard, but no one much liked her 1993 purple taffeta. Likewise Laura Bush's red lace dress, the work of a Texan designer, drew scant praise in 2000.

For Mrs Obama the trick will be balancing glamour with the subdued atmosphere of the times. "I'm sure she won't have an over-the-top gown studded with diamonds," said etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige, former social secretary to Mrs Kennedy. "It will be something suitably quiet for the times."

Since Vogue put her on its pages in late 2007, there has been little denying Mrs Obama's status as a fashion icon. Never mind that not everybody was enthralled by her black dress with splashes of Martian red on election night last year. Women's Wear Daily, the fashion bible, recently launched a website on which designers were invited to contribute sketches of how they think she should look. (Check out Isaac Mizrahi and Christian Lacroix.) The Washington Post has also run a contest for its readers to submit ideas for gowns.

Bobbi Queen, Women's Wear Daily senior editor, says Mrs Obama will be the first president's wife since Mrs Kennedy who has "the presence and elegance that would intrigue women".

The official inaugural ball tradition dates from 1809 when Dolly Madison, the first lady, hosted a gala at Long's Hotel, with 400 tickets sold at $4 each. The ball became a highlight of Washington society until 1913 when Woodrow Wilson called his off, deeming it too frivolous. In 1917 it was cancelled because of the First World War. For many years charity balls became fashionable but Harry Truman revived the official inauguration ball in 1949.

Inauguration diary

Hollywood elite flocks to Washington – Li Lo too

*If Hollywood feels a little less "liberal" this week, that's because the celebrity elite has disappeared to Washington. So great is the exodus that Vanity Fair has employed a crack team of investigative journalists to compile a full list of its members. It boasts more than 150 entries, from card-carrying lefties (Barbra Streisand, Joan Baez) to film industry power-brokers (Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, George Lucas), rock superstars (Jon Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Bono), rap moguls (Jay-Z, Usher, LL Cool J, Will.i.am), leading ladies (Jennifer Aniston, Halle Berry, Sharon Stone) and pretty much anyone who has ever adorned a deep-pile red carpet. Strangely, the magazine deemed Lindsay Lohan, below – who will attend the Neighbourhood Inaugural Ball on Tuesday – insufficiently glamorous to warrant inclusion.

Obama's buzzword a favourite with Kennedy

*Will Barack Obama top the soaring rhetoric of his election campaign? Boy-wonder speechwriter, Jon Favreau, 27, is toiling day and night to make sure that Tuesday's inauguration address cements his master's place in history. If he's searching for inspiration, Favreau could do worse than visit www.speechwars.com. It has archived every inaugural speech, and can create graphs that illustrate how presidential "buzzwords" have changed since 1789.

They show how "xenophobia" (a favourite of early inhabitants of the White House) has been replaced with "globalism". "Union" peaked in 1845, with 25 mentions, but is now obsolete. "Freedom" is on the rise, getting 25 of its 175 mentions in George Bush's last address. Meanwhile "change" was used 10 times by John F Kennedy, and nine times by Bill Clinton – but pretty much ignored by everyone else.

Show stopper? Sorry, too busy on the school run

*The inaugural ball gown may the first important sartorial decision Michelle Obama will make as first lady, but as a busy mother in the middle of moving house, finding time to pick the dress is anything but easy.

Sources within Mrs Obama's entourage say the first lady-in-waiting will only decide what dress she is to wear on the inaugural day itself. "Given the moving details that have gone in to the last two weeks, Mrs Obama has not been able yet to select her attire for Tuesday," a source said. Spontaneity is admirable, but given the mixed reception her election night outfit received, you'd have thought Michelle might pull out more stops to avoid any "frock horrors".

Guy Adams

On issues ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Iran to Darfur, from the tortuous nuclear negotiations with North Korea to policy towards an evermore assertive and nationalist Russia, the incoming Obama team must quickly make important choices – at a moment when its top priority is, inevitably, the domestic economic crisis.

But a key test of the new administration's intentions will come virtually on Day One, with its response to the bloody fighting in Gaza that has made a Middle East settlement even more remote. Both Barack Obama himself and Mrs Clinton have thus far kept their cards close to their chest, insisting that George W Bush alone is in charge of the United States' foreign policy until noon on 20 January.

But some signs have emerged that the US will take a more sympathetic line to the Palestinians. In her confirmation hearings, Mrs Clinton stressed the "tragic humanitarian costs" borne by Gaza's population, and indicated that the Obama administration, unlike its predecessor, would be vigorously involved in Middle East peacemaking from the start.

Like the President-elect, she has pledged continuing US support to the Jewish state. But the key question has yet to be answered: Would President Obama and Mrs Clinton press Israel to make real concessions, specially over its settlements, to hasten the two-state solution that she herself argued this week had been made even more urgent by the violence in Gaza?

The new Secretary of State will be helped by the global good will generated by Mr Obama's election, and a widespread readiness to let bygones be bygones, closing the page on the tensions between Mr Bush and even close US allies, especially in his first term over the invasion of Iraq.

She will also be the beneficiary of a major structural change in American foreign policy making. Even Robert Gates, who is staying on as Pentagon chief under President Obama, is urging more resources for the State Department, and a greater role for diplomacy. The contrast could not be greater with the Bush administration, when former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in alliance with the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, wrested influence away from the State Department.

That bureaucratic shift underlines the deeper shift likely under Mr Obama, towards a less abrasive, more multilateral foreign policy. This in turn means there will be more nuance too – a quality notably lacking under Mr Bush, who this week defended to the last his aggressive and controversial policies in his "war on terror".

The absolute distinctions he had drawn between "good" and "evil", said the outgoing president, "had made some uncomfortable". But he acknowledged in a valedictory TV address on Thursday: "Between the two there can be no compromise."

A willingness to compromise (albeit not a readiness to surrender vital US interests), will be more visible under President Obama, especially on issues such as climate change, and probably in the round of international talks soon to begin in Copenhagen, Denmark. There will also be a greater readiness to talk to adversaries, even though Mrs Clinton will be anything but a pushover at the negotiating table. No adversary is more problematic than Iran. Reportedly Washington last year rebuffed an Israeli request for bunkerbusting bombs to use in a military strike against Tehran's nuclear installations. But with Iran close to becoming a nuclear power, and the failure of negotiations to resolve the impasse, the Obama administration will soon be forced to choose. Like Mr Bush, he has said that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable. By comparison, Iraq and Afghanistan, the wars he inherits, are relatively straightforward issues. In the former case, Mr Obama will accelerate the drawdown of US troops; some will be sent to Afghanistan, where, he says, Mr Bush should have focussed his attention all along.

Happily for the new President, he can also take some simple decisions – "low-hanging fruit" in the parlance of his aides – that will instantly differentiate him from Mr Bush. One is an executive order closing down the prison at Guantanamo Bay, although implementation may take many months. Another is an easing of travel restrictions on Cuba, a first step towards lifting a US embargo opposed by the rest of the world.