This post has been updated.

A few thoughts from the Amtrak Quiet Car after six hours of inauguration-watching.

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For a “modest event,” that was still pretty huge. It’s true that Obama’s first inaugural attracted around 1.8 million people to the Mall, and his second was smaller by about a million. And yet a crowd that is twice the size of Woodstock is not to be dismissed. Like last time, the crowd was incredibly diverse. The African-American contingent was especially impressive, in size and emotional force. The airport on Sunday was filled with black women, men, and kids—arriving from all over the country—reminding everyone of the historical dimensions of the 2008 election. It’s too soon to forget it. The presence of Myrlie Evers-Williams on the platform this year made it certain that no one did.

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The Obamas are so preposterously good-looking, so put together, that you watch them come out of a morning church service and you notice the President of the United States fourth. Whoever thought to give Michelle Obama purple gloves so that they echoed her daughters’ outfits—well, are there prizes for that?

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The inaugural ceremony this time could not hope to match January, 2009, for history, but the music was, surprisingly, a great deal better. Last time, we got a quartet featuring Yo-Yo Ma, but he and his mates played “Air and Simple Gifts,” a weak piece of work by John Williams; also, the cold made it impossible to play and they had to Milli Vanilli their way behind a pre-recorded version of the piece. And then there was Aretha Franklin, the greatest singer of her era, whose hat was unforgettable but whose version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee” was less so.

This time, James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson, and Beyoncé were at their best. Taylor’s arrangement of “America the Beautiful” was exquisite—he’s always been an underrated guitarist—and Clarkson, although she seemed, at first, as nervous as a cat walking on a glass floor, nailed a magically peculiar version of “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.” And what to say about Beyoncé? One nation under Beyoncé? [Update: If the rumors that she lip-synched the National Anthem are true…I don’t care. Or only a little.]

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Last time, Aretha won the award for best hat. This time, the nod goes to Antonin Scalia. Senator Claire McCaskill turned to her Twitter account and called the Justice’s headgear “really weird.” It turns out the hat had been a gift of the St. Thomas More Society, in Richmond, Virginia—a replica of the one worn by More in the portrait by Hans Holbein. More, as readers of history and fans of “A Man for All Seasons” and “Wolf Hall” will recall, was the principled opponent of the Protestant Reformation who lost his head (and hat) after giving Henry VIII problems over Anne Boleyn. What the hat says about the way Scalia will vote on gay marriage and affirmative action later this year is not known. But we may guess.

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Obama’s speech was infinitely better, more self-assured, more politically precise than his first. This was Barack Obama without apology—a liberal emboldened by political victory and a desire to enter the history books with a progressive agenda. His rhetoric was not high-flown, but it was muscular, clear. Gone is the primacy of compromise, which marked Obama’s days as president of the Harvard Law Review and even his first years in office. He no longer seems determined to transcend ideology or partisanship; experience has led him toward an engagement with politics in a tougher, clearer way. Or so this speech seems to indicate.

There were countless touchstones of this clear liberal agenda: the association of the 1969 Stonewall demonstrations with the 1965 black-freedom march in Selma and the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York; his defense of citizenship and civic republicanism; his critique of go-it-alone laissez-faire capitalism; his insistence on the science of climate change and his extensive vow to pursue policies aimed at reducing the peril. The leitmotif was the word “together”—and not as a sugary, banal note of meaningless unity, but rather as one of civic responsibility to the poor, the sick, the disregarded.

The speech was no match for the two greatest moments of oratory ever heard in Washington—Lincoln’s second Inaugural and Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s address, nearly a century later, at the Lincoln Memorial—but, if it is followed by action, it will be counted among the most important American political addresses of the modern era. In 1933, F.D.R. came into office with an Inaugural Speech calling for fearlessness in the face of horrific adversity; four years later, with greater confidence, he outlined the framework of a liberal state—“the need to find through government the instrument of our united purpose to solve for the individual the ever-rising problems of a complex civilization.”

That seemed to be what Barack Obama was after Monday, an echo of F.D.R. in 1937—a reassertion of government, of commonality.

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The conventional wisdom in much of élite Washington and beyond is that Barack Obama, for all his intelligence and political skill, cannot make a political deal because he is a loner, a snob, and a reluctant host. It’s as if the country has such trouble making progress on a range of issues because the President isn’t big on inviting the Republicans over to the White House for a jackets-off, sleeves-up night of gin rummy, bourbon, and branch water. “He never goes out.” “He doesn’t romance the opposition.” “He’s not like Bill Clinton, who could make a deal with an enemy like Newt Gingrich.”

Where to begin? Bill Clinton was undoubtedly a more gregarious spirit, reaching out, in his time, to his Republican brothers and sisters with a constant and humid embrace. Well, that worked nicely. Those very Republicans impeached him. This was one of the most damaging and vengeful acts of political assault in modern history.

Yes, it is true that Obama’s temperament is more diffident than that of Bill Clinton. (Whose is not?) And yet Obama did manage to be elected President. Twice. As a black man with a name that rhymes with…and so on. This is something rarely achieved by hermits.

What’s more, as Rick Klein at ABC News rightly points out, Obama’s social reluctance is largely a myth. The Speaker of the House, John Boehner, has been invited to six formal state dinners—every one the Obamas have thrown so far. The Speaker has turned down every invitation.

Last year, the White House held a reception for new members of Congress; only twenty-seven out of eighty-seven new Republican House members bestirred themselves to attend.

Last month, Obama invited a small group of Congressional leaders to the White House to watch “Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner’s remarkable portrait of a founder of the Republican Party. The G.O.P. chiefs, Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, spurned the invitation.

What’s a President to do? In his last press conference of the first term, Obama replied to a reporter’s question about his sociability with a wry turn: “I’m a pretty friendly guy. And I like a good party,” Obama said in the East Room of the White House. “I promise you we invite folks from Congress over here all the time. And when they choose to come, I enjoy their company. Sometimes they don’t choose to come, and that has to do with the fact that I think they don’t consider the optics useful for them politically.”

But, he allowed, the future may bring new opportunity. “The nice thing is that now that my girls are getting older, they don’t want to spend that much time with me anyway,” Obama said, “so I’ll be probably calling around, looking for somebody to play cards with me or something, because I’m getting kind of lonely in this big house. So maybe a whole bunch of members of the House Republican caucus want to come over and socialize more.”

Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty