Barack Obama is making me nervous. "Be the change," his official inauguration poster urges. Until recently I would have done anything the man suggested. But could he be more specific?

This presidential inauguration is a good time for my chronic paranoia to flower. (How did George W. Bush put it, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.")

What change? Does it make me uncool to wonder if I shouldn't make the change rather than be it?

I'd expect this amorphous self-improvement sloganeering from inauguration evangelist Rick Warren and his "purpose-driven life." Or from Oprah and her daft "live your best life," but it seems odd coming from a sensible person like Obama.

The assembled masses

On second thought, he must be addressing the collective "us," meaning the throngs packed into the base of the poster, below the hearty red, white and blue diagonals that unnervingly bring to mind Soviet Constructivist propaganda posters of the 1920s.

The lines below the inaugural seal must be intended as the letter V (for victory?), or perhaps the ribbons of that recently much-abused U.S. Congressional Medal of Honour, or those weird football-uniform stripes on the chief justice's black robe.

This is the kind of extreme analysis I use to pass the time while sitting on the subway and it's great fun. I enjoy it.

Are the massed dots in the poster really a reference to the gorgeous scarlet spatters on Michelle Obama's Narciso Rodriguez victory dress? Why do wealthy people so often wear flat quilted fabrics? And will that photograph of Wall Street bad guy Bernie Madoff strolling in a jacket that looked like a black Chanel purse put an end to this fad?

But over-interpreting the Obama poster isn't what is worrying me. I'm only doing it to get rid of my discomfort with exhortations in general and with why Obama shouldn't be making them, particularly now that he has the power to create real propaganda.

Magpies

As for the poster itself, I don't question Shepard Fairey's motives; he's a fine artist whose work was invaluable to the Obama campaign and his Banksy-like aura is entirely of this era.

"All artists are magpies," Fairey rightly says. The poster catches the moment all right. But it reminds me of James Fitzpatrick's classic portrait of Che Guevara, a man who, like many of us including George W. Bush, didn't know when to stop and came to a bad end.

It's unwise, is all I'm saying. Obama is still creating expectations he can't fulfil, even though he has been warned against this.

As actor Eddie Izzard said when he was castigated for hanging around then prime minister Tony Blair, he wasn't disillusioned with the hated Blair. "I was never illusioned."

Don't let me down

I don't want to be illusioned about Obama. I want to get it right, from the start, and not be let down.

Obama invited to his inauguration a man (Pastor Rick Warren) who has openly preached that gays are lesser beings, unfit to marry and raise children.

When I initially decided to overlook this politically pragmatic invite, I felt like a bully, which is the worst thing a person can be. It's easy for me to let Obama off the hook on Warren, but then I'm not gay.

That is why I don't like this skilled rendition of Obama gazing into a distance, which is clearly implied to be packed with future glory, and being told to Be the Change.

What change, I ask again? It sounds like the same old thing.

Isn't it our turn?

We liberal-minded people, hundreds of millions of us, have triumphed. We were proved right about George W. Bush.

We said that he embraced stupidity; it is wonderful to see intellect valued again in public office.

We said he panicked after Sept. 11, 2001, and gave terrorists the most valuable gift imaginable — America's self-inflicted blows to its own military and system of justice.

We said that private affluence couldn't be sustained when it accompanied public squalor and now the economic collapse is destroying both spheres. (Obama can't fix this but he'll have to try.)

We said the invasion of Iraq was not justified. (Obama will have to find a way out of the morass.)

We said torture was wrong and the rest of the world would come to hate America and its allies for it. (Now Obama's torture-deploring cabinet nominees will need to find a way to restore a great nation's good name.)

So I should be high on happiness right now, no? The second Gilded Age is dead. People are thinking hard about the health of the planet.

In my own little universe, I finally have the birch tree in my garden I've longed for since childhood. I have eyesight, a pile of new books to read and am hearing rumours about a new nine-inch computer screen for reading big fat newspapers on my lap. That screen might save the industry I work in.

I'm finally teaching the university class I want to teach to the students I want to teach it to. I can spend the year watching Malia and Sasha Obama and their rivers of laughter and curiosity as they explore the White House and the world it opens up.

There will be a new season of Mad Men on TV and Bruce Springsteen has a new album coming out. Much pleasure and interest lies ahead.

Hark at me, trying to pump up enthusiasm in my own personal head. Yes, we were right. The thing is, though, I'd almost rather have been proved wrong.

I feel no triumph whatsoever and the triumphalism of the inauguration poster leaves me wary. It's redolent of wartime. I don't feel giddy. I just feel tired.