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

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