Honeymoons, by definition, don’t last long. Recognising this iron law, US President-elect Barack Obama has begun to cover his flank by lowering expectations. In his victory speech last week, he cautioned American people against setbacks and false starts amidst the very difficult challenges that confront his presidency — “two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century”.

During the campaign, Obama’s political genius lay in avoiding detail and presenting a large blank slate that others could write on. Running for office, however, is not the same as governing from it.

On the domestic front, Obama refused to be defined as a liberal Democrat, who might tax and spend his way through the next four years. He has in fact promised a tax cut for the middle classes, a sacrilege from the perspective of the Democratic Party’s left. On social issues too, Obama has sought to bridge the deep divide between liberals and conservatives in America.

On the external front, however, his pronouncements have been closer to the liberal internationalist view that dominates the Democratic Party’s foreign policy establishment. Obama can emerge a statesman on the world stage, if he can resist the activist temptations of American liberal internationalism and choose instead strategic restraint as the over-arching theme of his foreign policy.

A number of factors demand American restraint today. One, Obama faces constraints on the conduct of American foreign policy that no post-American president had to cope with. His emphasis, then, must be on the domestic — the renewal of American national strength.

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