Your brief Inaugural Address primer

So here it is.  The day when Barack Obama succeeds George Bush to become to the 44th President of the United States of America.  James has already written a preview of Obama’s inaugural address – but if you want to squeeze in some extra relevant reading ahead of 1700 GMT, then you could do worse than Jill Lepore’s piece for last week’s New Yorker; certainly one of the liveliest, most information-packed short histories of the inaugural address that I’ve yet come across.  This article from Sunday’s New York Times is also a neat, little scene-setter.

Otherwise, the best place to start is where many Presidents-elect start when preparing for their own inauguration: Abraham Lincoln’s two addresses, which have rightly become the yardstick by which all others are measured.  Words alone can’t cure a nation left charred and bloodied by civil war, but Lincoln’s political poetry surely played a crucial part in the healing process.