President George W. Bush on Thursday is to be sworn in for his second term in office, mindful of a legacy shaped by the war on terrorism and Iraq.
"America has need of idealism and courage, because we have essential work at home, the unfinished work of American freedom," the president will say in his inaugural address, according to excerpts released by the White House.
"In a world moving toward liberty, we are determined to show the meaning and promise of liberty," he will add.
Bush will be sworn in outside the US Capitol at noon (1700 GMT), in the 55th US presidential swearing-in and the first since the September 11, 2001 attacks that transformed his time in office.
His speech is expected to run 17 minutes and focus on broad second-term priorities like battling terrorism and spreading democracy.
"We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands," Bush will say on the steps on the Capitol. "The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world."
Bush has frequently pointed to elections scheduled for January 30 in Iraq -- where at least 20 people were killed when insurgents went on a bloody seven-car bomb rampage Wednesday -- as a hopeful sign for building a democracy there.
"This is an amazing time in the history of the world, and a nation with the influence we have should continue to help people realize their dreams and live in freedom," he told Fox News television this week.
On Wednesday, Bush sought inspiration during a visit to the US National Archives, viewing George Washington's 1789 handwritten inaugural address as well as the bible the first US president used for his oath.
He also mingled with some of the donors defraying the estimated 40-million-dollar price tag for the festivities and went to a ball where guests paired black ties and cowboy boots, in a nod to the fashions of his adoptive home state of Texas.
Some of the most generous donors were rewarded with private dinners with Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, or other leading administration officials.
Supporters flooded the city's hotels, adding to downtown traffic snarls that turned streets near the White House into virtual rush-hour parking lots.
Police patrolled the streets and agents from the Secret Service, responsible for the president's safety, watched rooftops and other vantage points.
In an early test of the unprecedented security, authorities late Tuesday detained a man who parked his battered van near the White House and threatened to set off an explosion, ending the standoff without incident.
On Wednesday, snow blanketed downtown Washington, already in the grip of a deep winter chill, but the inclement weather was nothing like the freezing rain that left many Bush supporters shivering and bedraggled during his January 2001 swearing-in.
After the hotly disputed 2000 election came to its controversial end, Bush had vowed to unite a deeply divided US public, a theme he says will animate this year's speech as well, despite his more comfortable winning margin.
"I know that this office carries a duty to the entire nation. After all, we are one America. And every day that I am your president I will serve all Americans," he said recently.
In addition to spreading democracy in the Muslim world, Bush has said he will seek to make his massive tax cuts permanent and attempt to overhaul the government-run Social Security retirement program -- despite widespread opposition that draws even from his own Republican party.
Bush said in another interview that the November 2 elections had ratified his decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein, even though polls show that a large number of his supporters erroneously believe that US forces have found the weapons of mass destruction at the core of his case for war.
"I think the decisions I've made in the last four years will make the world a better place," he said.
But a BBC World Service global opinion poll out Wednesday found that, on average across all countries surveyed, some 58 percent believe that Bush's re-election has made the world more dangerous.
And back home, Bush's scored a 51 percent approval rating in a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, one of the lowest for a president elected to a second term in the past 50 years, matching that of Richard Nixon when he was re-elected in 1973.