Priorities will matter more than inaugural address

Our take: Washington Post columnist Jonathan Bernstein reacts to President Obama's inaugural address. He comments that Obama's remarks today draw "a liberal picture of mainstream politics in the United States" but that "bureaucratic inertia and the necessity of choosing priorities will matter far more than the expansive liberal rallying cry that Obama gave this afternoon."

What struck me about Barack Obamas Inaugural Address today — a good speech, although far too long to be a great one — was just how little he gave to conservatives.

Indeed, quite the opposite. By discussing the real meaning of our creed with an explicit — jarring, even — mention of the idea of a nation of takers, Obama highlighted the differences between where he stands and where movement conservatives are. He tossed perhaps one small bone to the old post-partisan idea (that his was an oath to God and country, not party or faction), but very little else. Instead, there was talk about Being true to our founding documents in a way that made it clear that for him, those documents are far more than just compatible with contemporary liberal goals. For Obama, today, those founding documents strongly pointed the nation in a liberal direction.

Read more about Obama's inaugural address on The Washington Post.