By Dan Froomkin
1:19 PM ET, 01/23/2009

So this is what Obama gets in return for breaking bread with Washington Post opinion columnist Charles Krauthammer, among other right-wing pundits.

Obama's inauguration speech was mediocre, Krauthammer writes this morning -- but intentionally so.

Krauthammer also makes the startling claim that "Obama's unapologetic celebration of Washington and the Founders of the original imperfect union was a declaration of his own emancipation from -- or better, transcendence of -- the civil rights movement."

But "he buried it in an otherwise undistinguished speech marred by a foreign policy section featuring the mushy internationalism of his still-bizarre Berlin adventure. . . .

"A complicated man, this new president. Opaque, contradictory and subtle. And that's just day one.