Obama's challenge: after his historic victory, the President-elect faces a sobering list of issues to deal with, both at home and abroad.

AuthorSmith, Patricia
PositionBarack Obama - Cover story

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No President for generations has walked into the Oval Office confronted by the number of seismic challenges that await Barack Obama. Historians grasping for parallels point to Abraham Lincoln taking office in 1861 as the nation was collapsing into Civil War, or Franklin D. Roosevelt arriving in Washington in 1933 in the middle of the Great Depression.

The task facing President-elect Obama, 47, may not rise to those levels, but it is sobering that these are the comparisons being made. And that's why Obama began address ing what lies ahead on the evening of his victory over Senator John McCain.

"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," Obama told an enormous crowd in Chicago.

"There's new energy to harness, new jobs to be created, new schools to build, and threats to meet, alliances to repair," he added. "The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep."

The President-elect is already conferring with congressional leaders about a $100 billion economic package of unemployment benefits, public works, food stamps, and aid to cities and states.

Obama's election also means that the multicultural, post-racial society so often discussed but so seldom seen in public life is now, literally, the face of America. (See timeline, p. 10.) "They didn't give us our mule and our acres, but things are better," says Rutha Mae Harris of Albany, Ga., a 67-year-old veteran of the civil rights movement. "It's time to reap some of the harvest."

More than 136 million Americans (about 64 percent of the electorate) cast ballots--the highest turnout since 1908. Young people--those 18 to 29--voted in huge numbers (overwhelmingly for Obama), with their turnout as high as 55 percent.

"There was a tremendous tendency in the '90s to write off young people," says Peter Levine, a youth voting expert. "But Obama, like an entrepreneur who realized there was a latent market, really put some investment into trying to mobilize young people."

Overseas, after years of frustration with many of President Bush's policies, the rest of the world responded enthusiastically to Obama's victory. British historian Tristram Hunt says Obama "brings the narrative that everyone wants to return to--that America is the land of extraordinary opportunity and possibility, where miracles happen."

But the shift from campaign rhetoric to...

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