'A Great American Moment'

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By BILL NICHOLS & ALEXANDER BURNS
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0109/17586.html


The moment of reckoning edged ever closer for Barack Obama Sunday as the president-elect entered the final 48 hours before he becomes the 44th president of the United States.

The event of the day was a gala afternoon concert at the Lincoln Memorial attended by Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden and witnessed by hundreds of thousands of joyful supporters and curiousity-seekers, who waited for as long as six hours to jam the long stretch from the Memorial to the Washington Monument and then beyond toward the Capitol.

Flashbulbs lit a gray winter sky as a parade of musical stars and celebrities paid homage to an event that is being viewed as nothing short of a turning point in American history. The instantly iconic moment: Bruce Springsteen singing "The Rising" backed by a red-robed gospel choir.

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"In the course of our history, only a handful of generations have been asked to confront challenges as serious as the ones we face right now," Obama told the enormous crowd. "I won't pretend that meeting any one of these challenges will be easy. It will take more than a month or a year, and it will likely take many. Along the way there will be setbacks and false starts and days that test our fundamental resolve as a nation.

"But despite all of this — despite the enormity of the task that lies ahead — I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure — that the dream of our founders will live on in our time."

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But even in the earlier, quieter hours of Sunday morning, the remarkable inaugural energy that has transfixed the nation’s capital was already at work — an energy and excitement and anxiety that has shattered the daily routines of Washingtonians through unprecedented street and bridge closures and suffocating security measures. In simple terms, Washington has never experienced a weekend quite like this.

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Obama himself appeared in a taped interview on CNN's "State of the Union," telling host John King that the Inauguration represented a historic moment in American race relations.

"If you think about the journey that this country has made, then it can't help but stir your heart," Obama said. "The notion that I now will be standing there and sworn in as the 44th president, I think, is something that hopefully our children will take for granted, but something that our grandparents are still stunned by."