Now the hard part begins for Obama

For Barack Obama, winning the White House may have been the easy part.

That’s not to take anything away from the 47-year-old senator’s stunning achievement in becoming the nation’s first black president by expanding the traditional Democratic coalition. But even before he captured such “red” states as Ohio and Indiana, Colorado and Nevada, Florida and Virginia, it was clear the next president would face perhaps the most difficult domestic situation since Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in the Depression.

Indeed, in hailing his triumph, Obama conceded “the enormity of the task that lies ahead,” noting he will inherit “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century. ... The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term.”

His words were reminiscent of John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, when another generation’s young leader declared that his work might not be finished within 100 or 1,000 days or “even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Because of this fall’s financial collapse, Obama will have to craft a broad economic recovery package as his first order of business, even before he tries to fulfill campaign promises for a long-term alternative energy program and extension of health care coverage.

Fortunately, voters have given him what could become the most coherent working majority for any Democratic president since the 89th Congress enacted Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society in the 1960s.

Democratic gains fell short of some optimistic expectations but should be able to curb the Republican ability to obstruct Obama’s proposals.

And McCain’s words in offering Obama “our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises” were a far cry from Senate GOP leader Bob Dole’s defiant 1992 vow to lead the opposition to newly elected Bill Clinton at every turn.

Though Democrats failed to win a 60-vote, veto-proof majority in the Senate, they should be able, if they so choose, to work with a small number of GOP moderates — and perhaps McCain — to ensure votes for the new president’s agenda.

Democrats also bolstered their working majority in the House, where an influx of northern members has made the party more ideologically compatible than when Jimmy Carter and Clinton had to rely on conservative Southern Democrats.

Obama, meanwhile, gives every indication he will move quickly to craft an experienced governing team and the proposals he will present the new Congress in January, if it proves impossible to do something when lawmakers return this month.

Less partisan tone

It’s also widely believed he will put Republicans into key posts, perhaps keeping Robert Gates as defense secretary. That would help set the less partisan tone that Americans have long sought and which Mr. Obama reiterated he would seek when he said Tuesday: “I hear your voices. I need your help. And I will be your president, too.”

President Bush accentuated that tone Wednesday, when, he hailed the outcome as “a triumph of the American story” and foresaw “the inspiring moment” when the new president enters the White House.

Still, it will be 75 days before Obama takes office, and Bush will retain legal authority, if not the political clout.

Interregnums can be tricky, as when Carter was trying to free the Iranian hostages before Ronald Reagan took over and, even more notably, when FDR had to wait four months to replace a weakened Herbert Hoover.

Given the circumstances, Obama needs to focus on crafting a program and installing a team so he can really hit the ground running in January.

X Carl P. Leubsdorf is Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.