In his victory speech Obama said:

"You did it because you understand the enormity of the task that lies ahead. For even as we celebrate tonight, we know the challenges that tomorrow will bring are the greatest of our lifetime -- two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century."

The wars, the environment and the economy are the right targets. The current administration in the US actually loosened environmental controls, got its knickers in a knot on same sex marriage and stem cell research and lied the US into Iraq.

Obama called it a stupid war while shrub was gearing up for it. I voted for Obama by absentee ballot even though I don't like his policy of continuing Bush's faith based initiatives.

I can remember when the US Congress could not even pass an anti-lynching bill because southern senators filibustered against it. Now we have a man with a dark skin elected president. WHOOPEE!

I see that exactly the same people, who fell for K Rudd's hot air, have fallen for the same rubbish from Obama.

I could be wrong, [I was once], but I'm pretty sure both of us, [Oz, & the US], have a couple of hot air balloons in the top jobs. It could be just bad reporting, by the fawning media, but I never heard him actually say anything, during the whole campaign. The whole thing shouted christian revival meeting hype to me.

I will watch with interest to see if this bloke's any more effective than ours.

Well Hasbeen, it seems you have your nose out of joint, and you don't believe in giving someone a fair go. Obama can't make changes over night,he isn't sworn in till mid January. Mr Rudd copped one hell of a mess when elected, so many areas have been neglected for at least 10 years or more.Try being realistic for a change and look at the whole picture instead of snippets.

Anng, I think that Hasbeen is being entirely realistic.

Has there been a leader in Oz or US or UK or anywhere else that has really made a difference of the sort that we need in the last decade or so?

Rudd looked very promising. Then one of the first things he did when he won office was to greatly boost immigration, which he had not touted at all in his election campaign, and which is just so totally at odds with his ‘commitment’ to climate change, amongst other things.

There really hasn’t been anything particularly inspiring said by Obama in the last few months which could give us a real feeling of optimism regarding large-scale change.

The natural position seems to me to be one of considerable pessimism about Obama’s leadership. But even us ardent pessimists wish him all the best and hope that he will achieve great things.

I think I fall somewhere between Yabby's positive contributions and Ludwig's more cynical stance.

As usual, the hyper-cynical types quickly descend into conspiracy theories and exaggerated negativity (not you Ludwig, I think you can see the comments I'm talking about).

As I see it, we're guaranteed some improvement - I don't mean to say that Obama's certain to succeed in most of these endeavours, far from it.

But allow me a metaphor, if you will. Imagine that the ideal situation is a town in the middle of nowhere. Bush was drunk and had his foot on the accelerator, zooming away from this town at high speed. He had already sped off the road and through a few fields, and pretty soon he was going to plow straight into the side of a barn.

At the very least, Obama will stop the car. Whether or not he can turn it around and get us back to that town remains to be seen, but at least he doesn't seem to have empty beer bottles littered all over the front seat.

I think this is enough of a reason to drop the cynicism and be optimistic. Obama doesn't have to be brilliant to do better than Bush, he's just got to stop doing such horrific damage.

I actually think he will do some good in the office - I don't think he's going to solve all the US's problems, but I do think he'll reduce them somewhat.

TRTL, I hope you are right, but I'm afraid I doubt it.

I expect Obama will do about as much for the US as Nelson Mandela has done for South Africa.

From what I see, not one AVERAGE person in SA is better off than before Mandela came along, & many are worse off, if only in having high hopes dashed to nothing. At least we knew what Mandela stood for.

I have no idea, after all the hoo-ha, just what Obama stands for. As I said, this may be from bad reporting, but all I ever heard was rhetoric. There may have been more substance in the US, but it never got to here, if there was.

As with Rudd, I think a very large percentage of people were voting for what they hoped Obama was, not what they knew he was. I can see none of what his supporters think they can see, through their rose coloured glasses. I truly hope I am the one who needs new glasses