In just a few hours, George W. Bush will hand the incredible power of the presidency to Barack Obama, a man who disagrees profoundly with his policies and philosophy. Bush is excited, nonetheless.

"I will have a front-row seat in an unbelievable moment in American history. And I was deeply touched by a lot of people I saw on election night with tears streaming down their face and saying 'I never thought I would see this day coming,' " Bush told reporters last week.

Today's inauguration at long last proves that America can judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. dreamed they would. Having an African-American president will not end racism, but it will push it much further into the past,

Like his father, who lost to President Bill Clinton after serving one term, Bush has been gracious to his replacement. That hasn't always been the case. But whether genial, as the Bush to Obama handoff has been, or cold, like the Reagans' rudeness to the Carters, the transition of power and authority has always gone smoothly. That was true even after the greatest test of American democracy in modern times: the 2000 election between George W Bush and Vice President Al Gore, a contest ultimately decided by a starkly divided Supreme Court in a ruling that many believe was nakedly partisan.

Today's event will be a massive celebration. The nation has been ready to move on for many months. Every new president brings hope that lives will change for the better, that the nation will become stronger, its people happier and more respected around the world. That hope has never been stronger than it is for Obama, because of who he is, of what electing him says, and because America faces so many dire problems simultaneously.

In the end, however, presidential inaugurations are the ultimate tribute to democracy and the power embedded in the Constitution by the nation's founders. America's president is typically considered to be the most powerful person on Earth, and history is replete with tales of the strife and bloodshed that have accompanied the transfer of far less power from one person or group to another. But such is the genius of democracy that even when the relinquisher and the recipient of power have been rivals, the process has been at its worst civil and at its best helpful and sympathetic.

As a rough rule, to be considered a functioning democracy a nation must complete two successive transfers of power from one lawfully elected leader and party to another. That's harder to accomplish that it might seem. Though democracies have emerged off and on in many nations, only a few full democracies exist outside the West. The Economist magazine listed just 30 full democracies in 2008, and another 50 democracies it considers flawed in one or more fundamental ways.

Today, the United States will conduct its 44th successive transfer of power. Though the inauguration of Barack Obama is inescapably about him, it is also a affirmation of the power of democracy itself.