Washington  - The US media on Wednesday praised President Barack Obama's inaugural address for its clarity and truthfulness, but some editorials reflected on its lack of poetry and fire, a style which had echoed throughout his two-year election campaign.

The New York Times said the speech gave Americans the "clarity and respect" for which they "have hungered."

"In about 20 minutes, he swept away eight years of President George Bush's false choices and failed policies and promised to recommit to America's most cherished ideals," it said.

The Washington Post called it a moment of hope, because he combined with ease a sober acknowledgement of the nation's problems with "an unflappable assurance that they can be overcome."

Obama Tuesday spoke of a nation in the midst of a crisis - at war, with a weakened economy, lost homes and jobs, a flailing education system, expensive healthcare and the "nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable."

But he also said: "Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met."

Obama's speech was neither poetic nor peppered with the lofty language of the inaugural addresses of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or John F Kennedy, some editorials said. But it was unequivocal in outlining the country's problems and his plans to tackle them.

The Chicago Tribune, from the president's hometown, which said emphatically that "we've sent our very best to Washington," noted that, "history may decide differently, but at first blush there was no phrase in this speech that will be timeless."

The paper referred to the soul-stirring words of FDR - "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" or JFK - "ask not what your country can do for you," well-known in the US, and throughout the world.

But the Tribune acknowledged that Obama delivered what the country needed to hear from its new president: "A promise of accountability. A call for a new era of responsibility. A recognition of duty. A deep sense of the nation's traditions and its once and future greatness."

The Los Angeles Times said the inaugural address was "less poetic and less provocative" than some of his speeches on the campaign trail, but "effectively sounded the theme that the country can rebound from its current economic crisis." (dpa)