The Challenge for Obama
By Graham Davies

On Wednesday at 5pm GMT, Barrack Obama will walk the taughtest tightrope in the history of political public speaking.

His unique brand of personal presentation won him more votes than his policies. His speeches have inspired something in the American imagination that has not seemed recently possible: hope.

There is something about him that transcends cynicism. You can almost sense hard-bitten journalists wanting him to make their hearts melt. The Third Estate seem prepared to cut him more slack than they were any other incoming President.

But his delivery has not been matched by his specifics.

Of course, the shivering throng in DC will not want to listen to a list of tax proposals or a finely-calculated breakdown of Federal Infrastructure projects. But any lofty visions provided by his large team of writers will have to be brought down to earth by something memorable that will actually get done and not merely said.

This is not the time to out-do Kennedy’s vision that a man would walk on the moon by the end of the decade. Obama needs to be able to say that people will still have jobs at the end of the week.

“Yes we can” has to very quickly become “Yes we will definitely do this.”