Presidents use their inaugural addresses as an opportunity to talk about the future. But when they take the oath of office for a second time, they also use it to talk about the past.

Franklin Roosevelt used his second inaugural address, which many consider his best, to define the New Deal—not as a one-time reaction to a national economic crisis, but as a “new chapter in our book of self-government.” He proclaimed a “new order of things” in which “the test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” Ronald Reagan used his second address, effectively, to declare Roosevelt’s era over. Reagan framed his first term as an antidote to the era when “we asked things of government that government was not equipped to give” and proof that “freedom and incentives unleash the drive and entrepreneurial genius that are the core of human progress.”

Perhaps President Obama had those speeches in mind today, because he too used the occasion to define his first term—in ways, perhaps, that will last long beyond his presidency. If his first inaugural address was a vision of a better politics, then this address was a vision of a better society—a progressive vision in which government acts boldly to protect the weak, to promote economic growth, and to solve the problems we cannot solve on our own.

The contrast to 2009 was striking. That workmanlike speech was, above all, a call for less partisan fighting. “The time has come to set aside childish things,” Obama said in 2009, making a plea for national unity. It was an honorable effort and, ultimately, a futile one. As Obama would soon learn, his political critics were already strategizing to oppose him at every turn.

But despite this resistance, Obama accomplished a great deal, more than even many of his supporters realized at the time. He stopped the country from falling into depression, laying the groundwork for future economic prosperity; he brought new regulation to Wall Street and made the tax code more progressive; he saved the auto industry and the communities that depend upon it; and he put in a place a program to make health insurance available to all. Even allowing for all of the missteps and missed opportunities, that's an impressive list.