INAUGURATION, OPINION

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 12:00 PM

Pundits Roundup: Inaugural Edition

Commentators in the major national newspapers have given the inauguration their undivided attention in today's columns.

"In the end, race is likely to be secondary in defining Obama's place in history," Eugene Robinson contends.

With the headline, "Wish you were here," Bob Herbert recalls civil rights figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and James Farmer, whom he wishes could witness today's inauguration.

Richard Cohen writes a narrative leading up to Obama's swearing-in, enumerating the challenges the incoming president will face.

Obama wasn't Jonah Goldberg's "first choice for president, but he is nonetheless my president. And if ever there were a wonderful consolation prize in politics, shattering the race barrier in the White House is surely it."

DeWayne Wickham recounts the last 18 months leading up to today.

In the Wall Street Journal, author John Steele Gordon notes that Obama will not only be the first black president, but also the first president "whose ethnic identity is not linked to the extreme northwest corner of Europe."

Anne Applebaum describes the US Airways Flight 1549 safe crash-landing in the Hudson River as the "anti-9/11" and puts it into context of today's historic inauguration.

In USA Today, former Archivist of the U.S. Allen Weinstein lays out what he believes it will take for Obama to deliver an inaugural address that effectively bridges "campaign poetry and governance prose."

In the Washington Post, blogger Heather Michon cautions that the "odds are long" that Obama will deliver a "speech for the ages, an oration worthy of being memorized by schoolchildren and carved into monuments."

In the Washington Times, Jay Ambrose, former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard News Service, suggests Americans take a "citizen's oath, similar in some ways to the oath promising that the new president will faithfully execute his office and defend and protect the Constitution."

Dana Milbank finds humor in Hollywood's descent on Washington.

And here's a handful of the editorials on the inauguration:

USA Today, the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Hill, the New Hampshire Union-Leader and the Financial Times.