Some sentiments can’t be wrapped up nicely. They’re too shocking for any preparation to work; expressing them puts you too far outside decent society. So I’ll just say it, and try and defend myself weakly later: I’m already bored of Barack Obama. And he hasn’t even been president a whole day.

Bored, bored, bored. Bored of being told how picture-perfect his family is. Bored of being reminded he’s African-American. (I’d noticed a while ago, thanks.) Bored of being told this is a moment of historical magnitude. Bored of being told that he’s the world’s choice for President.

This grinch-like attitude to everyone else’s simple, gushy, pleasures may make me a terrible person. But I don’t think I’m as alone as it may appear; and if I am, that’s dangerous. Because if the world’s really quite as breathless as it seems, there is real danger for the transformative potential that a post-Bush presidency can, indeed, embody.

It is true that anyone taking over from George W. Bush would have been welcomed with the equivalent of worldwide, sustained, relieved, hysterical laughter. When Richard Nixon was forced out of the presidency in 1974, his successor went on television to tell a Watergate-stunned America that “Our long national nightmare is over.” Bush leaves the White House, by some accounts, even more unpopular than Nixon was when he had to quit; it wouldn’t be surprising if the world were to welcome an end to its long international nightmare. But the person succeeding him makes it easy for people to feel as if they’re slipping seamlessly from the nightmare into some pleasant, internationalist, Aaron Sorkin-esque dream. And of course, from a nightmare, one wakes up relieved — but pleasant dreams leave us in the morning with a sense of loss that can turn into bitterness.

There are two ways this can play out, though nobody wants to talk about them, because they’re deeply unglamorous — realistic, almost — and thus totally don’t fit the whole ultra-cool post-ironic Obama-as-President vibe.

The first path is relatively hopeful. The darkly amusing part about this election is that America has been given a remarkably charismatic leader, popular internationally, whose primary job is likely to be the supervision of America’s orderly retreat from its current, overextended over-involvement in the rest of the world; it has been given a change-praising younger man whose most pressing task will be the preservation of an international status quo that many of his most fervent supporters are likely to see as deeply flawed. He has to reconcile these worldviews openly and quickly, prioritising transparently, and working disappointment and recessionals into his narrative of hope. Simon Schama, the historian, predicted some time ago that the president after Bush would have to be the best storyteller of all. Obama is that, and then some; to succeed he will need all his gifts. Like Lincoln in his second inaugural, Obama needs to bend his formidable rhetorical talent not just

towards inspiring hope but comforting those he cannot help, warning those he will not help.

The other path? Disappointment, disaffection, danger. An Obama who speaks of unity, but lets the competing priorities of his followers overwhelm him. Those who aren’t bored yet will find, then, that their icon has feet of clay, feet capable of walking all over them. Surely someone else has noticed by now that so many of the expectations that have been laid on Obama — in which process, let it be said, he has acquiesced with the endearing mixture of coyness and encouragement typical of, say, the prettiest girl in high school — are strangely contradictory? That he cannot both rescue American agriculture and reduce world hunger? That he cannot both withdraw immediately from Iraq and leave a stable West Asia? That he cannot both rescue Detroit and act on climate change? That he cannot simultaneously “solve” Kashmir, ally with India, prop up Pakistan and fight an Afghan war? Whichever problem he addresses, interest groups that see in him hope will be disappointed, and that disappointment will be harsher the more exalted their current hopes. And if he attempts to be, audaciously, all things to all people once he governs; if he expects that his core of decency will continue to protect him; he is likely to stumble badly.

Something like that’s happened before, after all. The American electorate, bruised by Nixon as now they’ve been bruised by Bush, voted in a transformative liberal in 1976. Jimmy Carter’s ascent to the White House was considered historic then: a genuine outsider, someone willing to tell the truth about everything, a good, decent person in the way that few presidents had been till that point. But he faced crises abroad and at home — crises that his consensual approach couldn’t fix. For leaders who rely on personal integrity or charm, the moment helplessness or the slightest hint of ridicule seeps in, disaster awaits. (Obama has been immune to ridicule so far. Does anyone truly think that will last?) The dashed hopes of Carter’s presidency created Reagan, and set back liberal hopes for a generation.

Thus so much relies on Obama making it clear, as soon as possible, that he intends to govern differently from how he ran his campaign, and that he will be a president capable of making harsh choices, not a president who relies on rhetorical flights of fancy to keep trouble at bay. He has already made a start, choosing a cabinet that can’t be considered anything but ecumenical and talented, the cabinet of a man who intends a presidency of real greatness. And if he doesn’t manage to defuse anger born of hurt, born of the disillusionment of the hopes he raised, he will have none but himself to blame.

But at least I won’t be bored any more.

mihir.sharma@expressindia.com