Barack Obama pledges support for the working and middle class in America

There's no doubt any more where President Barack Obama wants America, and history, to place him - as a tough-minded liberal.

Forget the cautious moderation that often marked his first term and frustrated his most liberal supporters. His second inaugural struck a resolute, even combative tone as Obama positioned himself as a 21st century champion of the disadvantaged, a modern-day heir to the Progressive Era (a period of social activism and political reform in the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s).

His speech marked the culmination of a theme Obama started claiming more than a year ago when he spoke in the same Kansas town where Theodore Roosevelt a century ago laid out his vision for a new nationalism of government as protector of the poor and working class against the rich and powerful.

Then, it was helping the people survive the sharp edges of the Industrial Revolution at the hands of what Roosevelt once called the "malefactors of great wealth". Now, Obama promises a government to help people make it through an age of rapid social and economic change at the start of a new century.

For a middle class that's been losing ground for a decade, he promised new policies. For gays emerging from the shadows of society, he promised recognition and rights, the first president ever to use the word "gay" in an inaugural address. For immigrants who snuck into the country without documentation, he offered the promise of a new policy.

"We the people," Obama said, "understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it."

He challenged the country to set aside the politics of confrontation in search of progress toward great challenges. "We cannot mistake absolutism for principle, or substitute spectacle for politics, or treat name-calling as reasoned debate," he said. "We must act, knowing that our work will be imperfect."