WASHINGTON — Barack Hussein Obama takes the oath of office as 44th president of the United States today facing twin challenges of war and recession and an electorate that believes he's up to the task.
The nation's first African-American president also will face something more immediately imposing: a crowd that could exceed the record 1.2 million from Lyndon Johnson's inauguration in 1965, dotting the National Mall and lining the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route to the White House.
Then there will be the ghosts of presidents and preachers past: Abraham Lincoln, whose Bible will be used for the first time since his presidency. Franklin Roosevelt, the last incoming president to face an economy in such disarray. John Kennedy, whose youth and relative inexperience Obama shares. And Martin Luther King Jr., whose 80th birthday was celebrated Monday; he was assassinated when Obama was 6.
Center stage will be Obama, the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, who rose from the obscurity of the Illinois state Senate in 2004 to the most powerful job in the world.
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