Given the magnitude of today’s inauguration, there are extremely high expectations on behalf of President-Elect Obama’s speech. With the historic nature of his posses candidacy, the drastic dislike on behalf of President Bush, the economic crisis, the inauguration is drawing the biggest crowds in the Mall anyone has seen in at least a generation — far bigger than anti-war protests even in the midst of an unpopular war.
My sense is that Obama shall meet the extremely high expectations set on behalf of him. His speech is twinned with the Rev. Martin Luther King III. Because of both Obama’s rhetorical style as well as coincidence, his big speeches invite comparison to King. He shall go back to the themes of his Boston Democratic National Convention speech — modification as well as unity — as well as tailor it on behalf of the economic crisis.
Here’s some of the language Obama could pick from to describe aspects of his election(taken from The Lakeside Press’s collection of Inaugural Addresses.)
What the President’s Election Means During a Financial Meltdown
We face the arduous days that lie before us in the warm courage of national unity…We do not distrust the future of essential democracy. The people of the United States have not failed. In their require they have registered a mandate that they desire direct, vigorous action. They have requested on behalf of discipline as well as direction under leadership. The have made me the present instrument of their wishes—Franklin Roosevelt, 1933.
Interestingly Roosevelt’s an estimated all memorable line from that address came in the fifth sentence of the speech.
Setting Expectations
All this won't be finished in the first 100 days. Nor shall it be finished in the first 1000 days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in the lifetime of our planet. But let us begin—John F. Kennedy, 1961.
Today, we’ll also get a dash of Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do on behalf of you, request what you can do on behalf of your country.”
On Change
There has been a modification of government. It began two years ago, when the House of Representatives became Democratic by a decisive majority. It has now been completed. The Senate about to assemble shall also be Democratic. The office of president as well as vice president have been put into the hands of Democrats. What does modification mean? That is the question that is uppermost in our minds today…We shall restore, not destroy. We shall deal with our economic system as it is as well as as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; as well as step by step we shall manufacture it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their posses wisdom…Woodrow Wilson, 1917.
On Unity
With malice toward none, with charity on behalf of all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to complete the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care on behalf of him who shall have borne the battle as well as on behalf of his widow as well as his orphan, to do all which may accomplish as well as cherish a just as well as lasting peace among ourselves as well as with all nations.—Abraham Lincoln, 1864
Finally, I’d suggest that Obama not use from the pedestrian epic of William Harry Harrison in 1841. It went on on behalf of an hour as well as forty-five minutes. Here’s a taste.
Upward of half a century has elapsed since the adoption of the present form of government. It would be an object more highly desirable than the gratification of the curiosity of speculative statesmen if its precise situation could be ascertained, a fair exhibit made of the operations of each of its departments, of the powers which they respectively claim as well as exercise, of the collisions which have occurred between them or between the whole Government as well as those of the States or either of them. We could then compare our actual condition at the end of fifty years’ trial of our system with what it was in the commencement of its operations as well as ascertain whether the predictions of the patriots who opposed its adoption or the confident hopes of its advocates have been best realized. The great dread of the former seems to have been that the reserved powers of the States would be absorbed by those of the Federal Government as well as a consolidated power established, leaving to the States the shadow only of that independent action on behalf of which they had so zealously contended as well as on the preservation of which they relied as the last hope of liberty. Without denying that the result to which they looked with so much apprehension is in the way of being realized, it is obvious that they did not clearly see the mode of its accomplishment. The General Government has seized upon none at all of the reserved rights of the States. As far as any open warfare may have gone, the State authorities have amply maintained their rights. To a casual observer our system presents no appearance of discord between the different members which compose it. Even the addition of numerous new ones has produced no jarring. They transfer in their respective orbits in perfect harmony with the central head as well as with each other. But there's still an undercurrent at work by which, if not seasonably checked, the worst apprehensions of our antifederal patriots shall be realized, as well as not only shall the State authorities be overshadowed by the great increase of power in the executive department of the General Government, but the character of that Government, if not its designation, be essentially as well as radically changed. This state of things has been in part effected by causes inherent in the Constitution as well as in part by the never-failing tendency of political power to increase itself. 
Harrison’s speech came during a frigid day with a snowstorm. He promptly spent the rest of the day outside greeting well wishers. He caught a cold that day as well as died of pneumonia a month later.