President-elect has his hands full

Now the real work begins.

For every person who could be heard Monday saying that the two-year-long presidential campaign ended not an hour too soon, three more remember this as the most exciting election contest ever. Just as baby boomers look back to the 1960 presidential race between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon as the dawn of political awareness, a whole generation will look back to 2008 as its political coming-of-age year.

What will be remembered beyond the starkly historic facets of the campaign — a black man elected president , the prospect of a woman as vice president — is another matter entirely.

Brack Obama must govern a nation radically changed, and it’s hard to identify a major area in which it’s been for the better, during George W. Bush’s eight years in the White House.

First is the financial crisis. Could this be the issue that Obama will use to bring Americans together in common cause, with the indispensable support of a Congress willing to turn its back on the hyper-partisanship that has dragged it to new lows? One can hope.

No matter how well the financial crisis may be handled technically, it’s hard to imagine a rebirth of the American spirit without a sensible conclusion to the war in Iraq. It is the war that never should have been, the preemptive invasion and what seems like an interminable occupation of a foreign nation. The task before the country is to vigorously defend its own borders and rebuild the military as a formidable deterrent force.

Nowhere is the American character more deeply rooted than in the rule of law. George W. Bush and his henchmen, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, assaulted the Constitution, authorized torture and advanced the notion of the president of a law unto himself while Congress looked on in silence. Habeas corpus must be restored, the idea of the unitary executive tossed onto the rubbish heap and the outrage that is Guantanamo dismantled.

A bold, comprehensive and farsighted energy policy must be brought before Congress in the president’s first 100 days in office. This may well be the issue that defines the American economy and molds the American character over the next decade.

Our government leaders should create the climate that mobilizes the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit to meet these and the other challenges, health care among them, as the United States regains its proper place among nations.