Obamas, Bidens count down to inauguration

WASHINGTON -- In a time of profound national crisis, Barack Obama on Monday called Americans to service and optimism, darting through the capital for a blizzard of events on the observation of the 80th birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

On the eve of his inauguration, Obama talked with wounded troops at a military hospital and then visited an emergency shelter for homeless teens, grabbing a roller to help give the walls a fresh coat of paint. He appealed to the nation he will soon lead to remember King through service to others.

"As we honor that legacy, it's not a day just to pause and reflect -- it's a day to act," Obama said. "I ask the American people to turn today's efforts into an ongoing commitment to enriching the lives of others in their communities, their cities, and their country."

Big crowds were moving into the center of Washington on the eve of his elevation to the presidency, and Obama made a call for unity: "Tomorrow, we will come together as one people on the same Mall where Dr. King's dream echoes still."

First thing Monday, Obama visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center to talk with troops injured in battle, before moving to the Sasha Bruce House, a shelter for homeless teens, where he joined volunteers helping with the painting.

Obama once was immersed in such work as a community organizer in Chicago.

Michelle Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden's wife, Jill, were visiting Robert F. Kennedy Stadium where people were at work wrapping packages and writing letters to troops overseas.

President George W. Bush, with just a day left in his term, made phone calls from the White House to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and a dozen other world leaders to thank them for their work with him over the last eight years. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, was designated by the Bush administration to stay away from Tuesday's inaugural festivities "in order to ensure continuity of government," said Bush spokeswoman Dana Perino.

One official traditionally stays away when others in the line of presidential succession are gathered together, in case of a calamitous attack. Gates is to continue his role as part of Obama's Cabinet.

On the streets, live news broadcasts displayed on large-screen televisions attracted growing crowds of onlookers, and behind the scenes people made final preparations for the many parties, balls and other celebrations after Obama's oath-taking and the inaugural parade.

The president-elect and an army of aides and volunteers who have planned the lead-up to the inauguration have masterfully built excitement and expectation about the historic swearing-in of the country's first African American president.

The preinaugural festivities have enlivened otherwise staid Washington and seized the imagination of a nation in the grips of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s Great Depression, even as it fights wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Obamas and Bidens joined in their own call for volunteerism on the federal holiday that commemorates the Jan. 15, 1929, birth of King, a giant of modern American history, who advocated peaceful resistance and equality among all races. He was assassinated 40 years ago, but not before his work blazed a trail for Obama, the son of a black Kenyan father and a white mother from Kansas.

"Dr. Martin Luther King's was a life lived in loving service to others. As we honor that legacy, it's not a day just to pause and reflect -- it's a day to act," Obama said in a statement.

After dark on Monday, Obama will attend dinners honoring what his transition team termed "three Americans whose lifetime of public service has been enhanced by a dedication to bipartisan achievement." Among them will be Sen. John McCain, Obama's vanquished Republican opponent for the presidency.

Separate dinners will honor McCain as well as Colin Powell, the former secretary of state and Army general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Biden, for his long years in the U.S. Senate.

At a rollicking celebration Sunday at the base of the massive memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the 16th American president who shepherded the country through its civil war and freed blacks from slavery, the Obamas and Bidens appeared lost, at times, in the music.

Obama -- at one moment bobbing his head to the music, at another somberly absorbing the words of speakers -- seemed fascinated with the parade of A-list talent. Tens of thousands of concertgoers blanketed the grounds below the neoclassical memorial that houses a giant statue of Lincoln.

It was Lincoln, Obama's fellow Illinoisan, who opened the door on the racial divide for African Americans nearly 150 years. The 47-year-old president-elect stood before the crowd on the National Mall as a testament to America's lumbering and imperfect progress toward racial equality.

Taking the rostrum to end the concert, Obama again warned the nation and those assembled under gray skies and in chilly temperatures that Americans face a vast assignment in battling to stop their economy from sliding into disaster. But he smiled, too, reminding of his message of hope.

When he takes the presidential oath of office at noon (1700 GMT) Tuesday, Obama said he and the nation would bask in the dream that motivated his run for the country's highest office: "a belief that if we could just recognize ourselves in one another and bring everyone together ... then not only would we restore hope and opportunity in places that yearned for both, but maybe, just maybe, we might perfect our union in the process."

Somewhere between 1 million and 2 million people are expected to make their way to Washington for the swearing in ceremony and inaugural parade. Nearly a quarter million tickets have been issued for the festivities at the Capitol.

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