His opponent, Senator John McCain, often tried to distinguish himself from Obama by citing experience. Indeed, Obama has spent just two years in the Senate compared to McCain's two decades. Neither could boast of executive experience, but judging by the way Obama ran the tight ship that was his campaign, it's a good harbinger of his management style.

McCain, in contrast, appeared to make too much of his instincts. That might have served him well as a fighter pilot, but from the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate to the grandstanding when the economic crisis hit, one could not but wonder how much to rely on his gut feel.

What does Obama stand for? His campaign slogan – Change we can believe in – is really no help. All it says is that he is going to be different from outgoing President George W Bush, both in style and direction. That's not hard to do, considering how widely Bush is seen as a failure.

My reading of Obama is a lot more sober than I think most of his starry-eyed supporters might wish. From what I've seen in news reports through this long campaign, he appears to be a very deliberate man. Mostly, this is a good thing, suggesting as it does that he listens to advice. A lot of course then depends on the quality of advisors he surrounds himself with. The downside of being deliberate by nature, is that he might turn out to be indecisive. We have seen this with President Yudhoyono of Indonesia, for example. Let's hope that's not true of Obama, not when the world is in economic turmoil.

At no time during this long campaign did I get the feeling that Obama was idealistic. Nor that he even had any big ideals. This may come as a shock to some of his supporters from the liberal end of the political spectrum. He certainly appears to have a lot more sympathy for the poor and marginalised than the people in the Bush administration, or the Republican Party generally, although again, that's setting a very low bar. His political sense is centrist and pragmatic, which is what America needs at this time.

My sense is that he was driven to seek the presidency by ambition, not ideals. But this quality also means he is capable of making deals with the devil. And there are plenty of devils in the world at large who might be all too happy to make deals with the US. I haven't yet seen Obama drive a hard bargain; we shall have to watch carefully.

However, foreign affairs will not be his top priority if he can help it. Clearly, there's plenty in the US' domestic affairs that needs fixing, and historically, Democratic presidents have paid more attention to domestic issues than external ones.

I hardly need to list the chief issues that demand his attention; they have emerged through the campaign: the economy and health care. Obama will be called upon to be a fast learner, he having no background in economic policy. It is almost scary, except that McCain was scarier. At least Obama knew that economics mattered. One wasn't even sure that McCain realised that.

But in this regard, Obama has to tread very carefully. Unrealistic expectations can derail his presidency quite early in his term. It seems necessary that he should start to lower expectations immediately, and to prepare the American people for sacrifices. The bingeing of the Bush years must end, what with generous tax cuts, interest rates that have been too low for too long and the huge budget deficits, not least due to the cost of military campaigns abroad.

Obama has already said that tax rates need to go back to the Clinton-era levels. That may not be enough. The US still faces a crisis at least as shocking as the present one -- in another, what, 10 years? – when the social security system, on present trends, will go broke. Between the cost of organising for universal healthcare and shoring up social security, there's going to be a lot of bad news to sell to the American people. And all this in the midst of a recession.

What about Asia? What ABOUT Asia? The long-term trend that began with the Bush administration will continue through Obama's. America will gradually lose interest in Asia, and more and more accommodate China as the rising power.

There is nothing truly pressing about East, South and Southeast Asia (other than Pakistan's border with Afghanistan) that Obama needs to attend to, at the cost of attending to something else. Even North Korea, on present trends, can be handled at State Department level.

Strategically, what is important is for the Obama administration to keep relations with China on an even keel. The US realises – and it's true whether it's a Democratic or Republican administration – that tumultuous relations with China can seriously complicate America's strategic interests in other parts of the world, let alone US economic interests. China's huge foreign reserves and increasing share of the world economy mean the US will have to accommodate a bigger role for the emerging giant in global affairs.

The US is therefore likely to take the view that so long as no part of Asia totally blows up, they're going to leave well enough alone. And into this space, China will slowly creep.

But we should also be sanguine, and not only because I see nothing malevolent about China's rise. The US as an imperial power is currently over-extended. While in the short term, its neglect of our backyard may be disappointing, in the medium term, it is better to have a re-energised US than one continuing its spiral down. We will have to understand that the US needs to turn inward for a while to put its house in order. That is the chief agenda for the President Obama to be inaugurated next January.

© Yawning Bread