The economic crisis that propelled him into office has created this opportunity. It provides the justification for spending programmes that would be denounced in normal times as reckless experiments in an un-American socialism. The cost of the plans announced in these early days of his presidency is already heading towards a cool $1 trillion. Andrew Rawnsley is Associate Editor and Chief Political Commentator, The Observer Some of this is to be directed into public works programmes, a new New Deal. This makes considerable sense. America has a creaking infrastructure and a stricken construction industry. But such enormous spending programmes are hardly without risk. No one is yet sure how intelligently or stupidly these mind-boggling sums will be spent. If the money is shovelled out without due diligence, a lot of it may end up in the wrong hands, being spent in unproductive ways. Congressmen will pursue their timeless vice of voting for 'pork-barrel' projects of dubious merit to please their constituents. Billions of dollars will be squandered if they are used to construct lots of bridges to nowhere.

There is no exact historical precedent for the scale of the challenges confronting Obama, but the most useful comparison is with Franklin D. Roosevelt when he arrived in the White House in 1933. Roosevelt and his colleagues did not really have a grand plan for tackling the Great Depression. They were often making things up as they went along and making mistakes as they did so. Roosevelt argued that it was "commonsense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something."

Obama also seems to be of an improvisational temperament. He often says that "my interest is in finding something that works" and is as fond of remarking that "I'll listen to any good idea, wherever it comes from."

He has made a promise - how true he is to it, we shall see - that he will lead an administration "that admits when it makes mistakes and adapts itself to new information, that believes in making decisions based on facts and on science as opposed to what is politically expedient". Obama has explicitly said that his approach "means a government that is not ideologically driven. It means a government that is competent."

Open to negotiation
Everything we have learnt about Obama – from his early days in office, from his campaign, from his brief time in the Senate, from his period as President of the Harvard Law Review – suggests that he is a rational, complex and questioning individual.

Obama is open to negotiation about how to approach things. He is confident enough to build a team filled with strong personalities with their own ideas. His Cabinet appointments show that he values talent and experience over ideology or personal loyalty. He has given the most senior job in the Cabinet to Hillary Clinton, his rival for the nomination, and placed two Republicans in critical national security roles. It will be a stiff test of his management skills to harness all those big egos behind a common purpose. Fail, and he will end up with an administration riven by faction fights. He will also need the intelligence and judgement to choose between their advice when it clashes. One of the truer things said by George W. Bush is that a president has to be "the decider". Fail in that role and Obama cannot succeed as a president.