THE HIGH expectations of change at home and abroad following Barack Obama's victory in this week's US presidential election is a huge challenge for his incoming administration. A great test of his political capability as a leader and communicator will be how he decides on the priorities and timing of his political programme.
The admirable skill, discipline and organisation demonstrated during the campaign must be followed by even more far-reaching application of these qualities as he chooses his administration, deals with several crises during the transition period and then decides on his economic, political, social and foreign policy agenda.
He was cautious in his first press conference last night when he emphasised the priority of a stimulus programme for middle-class voters. He read from a prepared script and the oratory was less inspirational. He must now link delivery to available resources and political support. That these resources are made even more scarce by the US financial and economic crisis which boosted his appeal to voters in the closing stages of the campaign is a central paradox of the result. Likewise, his - and his party's - decisive victories sit uneasily with his determination to have a bipartisan appeal and his obligation to govern on behalf of all Americans. But Mr Obama has an undoubted mandate for change from the result and his legitimacy cannot be questioned as he goes about making it.
Mr Obama confirmed in his first press conference as President-elect that the urgent economic tasks facing the incoming administration have forced themselves to the top of its agenda. Spiralling unemployment, falling family incomes, declining public revenues and pervading uncertainty are inauspicious conditions for any new government. They demand a radical approach. Mr Obama can best deliver on that by boosting poor and middling family incomes by a combination of fiscal stimulus through infrastructural programmes and taxation relief to stimulate consumption. He badly needs to arrest the decline in economic activity so as to retrieve the confidence and trust needed for risk and innovation. His alternative energy and climate change programmes can fulfil a similar function.
He indicated that healthcare and educational reforms have a longer timetable and require careful planning. That can be accepted if these objectives are honestly communicated and visibly programmed over the whole four-year term and beyond it. That will need congressional support and determined resistance to special interest groups.
Many of Senator Obama's priorities require matching action internationally. There is scope here for a radical approach to economic and foreign policy, whether on the financial crisis, climate change or on symbolic issues like the closure of Guantánamo and putting an end to military torture. After a prolonged and intensive campaign US voters are ready to respond to a new political leadership well able to articulate its chosen priorities.