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Like the man himself, President Obama's Inaugural Address was tougher than it first sounded.

Obama was characteristically eloquent but unusually concrete for the setting. He resisted the inaugural temptation to frame the choices facing the country at a level so abstract that all differences dissolve. His manner conveyed determination more than celebration. He balanced the pledge of renewal obligatory at these occasions with an unusually candid account of the obstacles impeding it. And he twinned his promises to span divides at home and abroad with reminders that he has strong ideas about exactly where to build the bridges. The speech was a rose with the thorns left on.

Obama, for instance, seemed entirely sincere in praising President Bush's service. But that didn't deter him from repudiating Bush's proudest accomplishment, his approach to the struggle against terrorism. "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals," Obama declared, unmistakably aligning with those who believe that Bush tarnished the latter in pursuit of the former.

Obama was equally forceful in linking consensus and change, two ideas often considered antithetical. He insisted that Washington must transcend the reflexive partisanship that has dominated its past two decades -- a pattern of "recriminations and worn-out dogmas" that he memorably dismissed with a scriptural flourish as "childish things."

But Obama was just as clear that he expects reconciliation to occur in the context of a fundamental reordering of national priorities and strategies. The action that he promised on the economy was not incremental or cautious but "bold and swift." And the domestic agenda that he sketched -- building roads and bridges, harnessing solar and wind power, transforming education -- lacked nothing for ambition.

By urging America to come together and leap forward, Obama underscored his gamble that bold change and national reconciliation are not incompatible. Each party's most ardent partisans disparage compromise as a recipe for split-the-difference minimalism and anemic leadership. Obama, by contrast, seems to be betting that he can simultaneously redirect and reconnect the country -- that the best way to restore national "unity of purpose" is to challenge all Americans to sublimate their differences in response to the harrowing trials confronting the country. In that sense, the diverse throng and unnerving stock market decline that greeted Obama on Tuesday seemed perfectly paired symbols of the day.

This fusion of unity and aspiration has defined Obama's course since his election. Down one track, he has repeatedly reached out to Republicans and others who initially resisted him. That impulse has shaped everything from the selection of evangelical Rick Warren to deliver the (surprisingly bland) inaugural invocation; to the selection of a national security team headlined by Bush's Defense secretary, Robert Gates, and the woman who fought Obama through 15 rounds for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Rodham Clinton; to his unprecedented post-election courtship of John McCain, his Republican opponent.

At the same time, Obama has recommitted himself to audacious goals. That ambition shone through the poetry of his Inaugural Address, but (to borrow Mario Cuomo's distinction) is even more apparent in the prose of his governing agenda. The economic revitalization plan that Obama and his congressional allies are developing represents not only a massive effort to revive a flat-lining economy but also the most sweeping attempt by any Democratic president since Lyndon Johnson to fund the public investments that the party considers essential to long-term growth -- from primary and secondary education and scientific research to renewable energy. Those initiatives are less a response to today's crisis than an expression of the formula that Democrats think can best ensure prosperity tomorrow.

It's easy to envision Obama's twin goals of broad coalitions and big change colliding. To attract meaningful support from Republicans or other groups outside the Democratic orbit, he must offer those interests not just consultation but substantive concessions. Yet he cannot concede so much that his ideas lose their forward thrust.

His best chance of squaring that circle is to ask all Americans to accept sacrifices to advance big goals, such as economic revival, energy independence, and universal health care. In his Inaugural Address, Obama took a first step on that difficult path by signaling that although he's willing to let others share the steering wheel, he has no confusion about the destinations he intends to reach.