Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up

Roger Cohen, on Obama's inaugural speech and responsibility:

Responsibility, restraint, humility, peace: this is not the habitual vocabulary of America’s heroic narrative. It constitutes a new lexicon of American power. Are Americans ready to die for responsibility?

Perhaps not, but they may well seek dialogue in its name. “The world has changed — and we must change with it,” Obama said. Even change has changed now: no longer a clarion call, it is a responsibility.

George McGovern tells Obama that sending troops from Iraq to Afghanistan is "going from the frying pan into the fire."

Robert Ehrlich analyzes Obama's inaugural address and concludes that he's socialist. Joe the Plumber was right!

Marc Thiessen, unemployed speechwriter, can hardly keep out the hope that Barack Obama will rescind Bush policies and that America will suffer a terrorist attack.

Gail Collins says:

Having been lucky enough to attend two of the most memorable events in modern American history, I am able to report that Inauguration Day in Washington was very much like a cold-weather Woodstock.  [...]

The big difference was in the national reaction. The only people who felt unified during Woodstock were those who were there — everybody else was horrified or jealous. But the inauguration left the whole country glued together emotionally, one big American ball of hope.

... but her concerns about Tim Geithner and Charlie Rangel has her saying, "Really, we’re ready for a new era that looks a little ... newer."

Karl Rove continues to review the show that closed out of town, saying that George Bush "got the most important things right."

Robert J. Barro is all over "Team Obama" and voodoo economics.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, the national organizer for "a nonprofit foundation dedicated to correcting the historical record about President Bush and the war in Iraq," is funny.

Joan Vennochi says that Obama has inherited collective doubt about policiticans, and that:

This country just witnessed what happens when it gives a president the benefit of the doubt at a time of crisis. It's too bad so many skeptics stepped aside after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, giving President Bush permission to launch a war on a premise that turned out to be false.

The situation is even more complicated today, given the international fallout after the Bush years and the economic turmoil at home and abroad. At this time of crisis, skeptics should step up, not aside.

Will Bunch thinks that Obama should use Ronald Reagan as his role model ... not his policies, just "the confidence, the focus, the pragmatism and the optimism..."