In a State of the Union address the president can set out the details of his new federal policy on widgets and waterworks. In the Inaugural Address, however, Barack Obama will need to be as much of a poet as his friend, Elizabeth Alexander, a prize-winning poet who will read the celebratory poem.

The new president will want to speak to the nation in transcendent and optimistic terms. He will obviously want to note the racial dimensions of his victory–the final fulfillment of the Constitution–while linking his election to his predecessors and the long chain of forty-four peaceful transfers of power.

But if he wants to go beyond poetics and accomplish something, President Obama will need to address our current reality–that America must make deep and fundamental changes in the next few years, or our country will lose its luster, its quality of life and its greatness. He must call for a willingness to compromise and move forward on a number of knotty issues–the need to reform Social Security and Medicare, the need to transform ourselves from a nation of indebted borrowers to a nation of savers, the need to restrain spending and set priorities.

The difficulty–though it is not impossible–is to convey a sense of crisis, without losing a sense of optimism. Americans do not respond well to leaders they perceive as Chicken Littles, or as nags, or as sour declinists. They do respond well to a Kennedy or Reagan who speaks of the future in optimistic terms of the New Frontier and Morning Again in America.

The challenge for Obama will be to be both realistic and transcendent, to convey both a sense of crisis and optimism. Anyone who wishes to help the transition team can do so by donating a pallet of yellow legal tablets and ten pounds of coffee. This one is going to be a doozey.