Vote: What was your favourite part of the speech?

If the Reverend Joseph Lowery, a civil rights icon and friend of Martin Luther King stole the show, it was because he proved America could laugh at its divisions.

His politically incorrect ditty about the time when “when brown can stick around… when the red man can get ahead, man,” was a great tonic after so many solemn comments about how history was made on that sunny, icy day in Washington.

It fell to him to deliver the closing prayer and what a blessing that turned out to be. He gave America permission to move on.

Race doesn't matter, crowds chanted during the election campaign. That is still not true, but now it matters a lot less.

The two million-strong crowd willed Barack Obama’s inaugural address to be equal to the occasion. Perhaps nothing could be as awe-inspiring as Aretha Franklin billowing like a ship in full sail as she sang My Country ‘Tis of Thee, the hymn of liberty adapted from God Save the King.

There were some tingling moments when Obama spoke of those who “endured the lash of the whip and ploughed the hard earth” to bring prosperity and freedom to America.

But just how memorable his speech will be depends partly on how his administration shapes up to the forces that have already transformed his rhetoric from a simple but stirring one of hope on the campaign trail to an elemental struggle against the “gathering clouds and raging storms”.

Obama has set himself a tough measure by which to judge his record in office in four years’ time. What mattered, he suggested, was not the statistics and data of crisis but the “less measurable but no less profound.... sapping of confidence across out land – a nagging fear that America’s decline is inevitable and that the next generation must lower its sights”.

The fear that America had already reached its zenith has troubled conservatives and liberals alike under President George W Bush. Little more than a decade after becoming the world's only superpower, the nation seemed to wobble.

The swearing-in of Obama, the son of an African immigrant, to the highest office in the land was a glorious affirmation in itself that the nation has not exhausted its ability to renew its promise. And seeing Sasha, 7, skip to the dais in the confidence that her father could surely do anything brought the promise of spring to the freezing capital.

The real test, however, will be whether the country feels better off at the end of four years – and not just materially.

If Americans can pick themselves up and dust themselves off, as Obama exhorted, he believes they will feel a renewed sense of purpose. He also offered the promise of a moral reawakening by reaching out to the Muslim world and breaking down “the lines of tribe” and old hatreds, while offering no quarter to terrorists.

It wasn't exactly feel-good rhetoric but it was the kind of talk that instils pride.

On a day when America celebrated the "peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time", to quote Rick Warren - the other pastor who was outshone by Lowery in every other respect - it was a worthy sentiment to invoke.

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