KEY POINTS:
Barack Hussein Obama becomes the 44th President of the United States at a time when fear and uncertainty is only matched in scale by hope and expectation.
No president since the Great Depression has faced such mountainous economic and political ruin on entering office, with wars and a monetary meltdown.
The US lost 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945. And 1.9 million of them were shed in the final four months of the year, as unemployment hit 7.2 per cent, a 16-year high.
But no incoming president in recent US history carries more belief that he can stare those crises down.
Obama sits on an 82 per cent public approval rating. At the same stage in 2000 George W. Bush was at 65 per cent and Bill Clinton in 1992 was on 67 per cent, according to a CNN/Opinion Research survey.
Even before he takes the oath of office on Wednesday, it is apparent that his will be a different presidency, one to which some of the conventional rules and wisdoms may not apply.
The nature of the challenges Obama faces are matched by the opportunities he sees and also represents - as the first black president and leader of a tech-smart generation.
As he enters the White House he is pushing for the passing of what would be his signature achievement - a roughly US$825 billion stimulus package that aims to:
Upgrade America's infrastructure.
Double the use of alternative energy in three years.
Make three-quarters of federal buildings energy-efficient.
Computerise all health records in five years.
Create three to four million jobs.
Set the nation on a more economically sustainable path.
The near-death of Detroit is also seen by the incoming administration as a chance to create a more energy-focused automotive industry.
Obama directed his team drawing up the stimulus package to incorporate principles such as "new public-private partnerships to support innovation" and "investments in ideas that work over ideology".
But questions have clouded it, with doubts over whether the package will detonate a big enough bang to jolt the economy to life.
Has too much attention been lavished on longer-term goals? Will it be a Trojan horse for multiple wasteful projects? Are its US$275 billion worth of tax cuts a sop to Republicans? Is it actually too timid?
Economist Paul Krugman bluntly said it "falls well short of what's needed".
In contrast, his fellow New York Times columnist David Brooks has lashed its "overload", brought about by Obama's "audacious self-confidence".
Noting that "this will be the most complex piece of legislation in American history", Brooks wrote that Obama "has picked policies phenomenally hard to implement, let alone in weeks. The conventional advice for presidents is: focus your energies on a few big things. Obama just blew the doors off that one".
And Brooks felt moved to offer this prediction: "By this time next year, he'll either be a great president or a broken one."
As Obama snuggles into the mantle of most powerful man on the planet, there's uncertainty over what he'll be like as President and whether he can succeed. Partly because of the situation he inherits, but equally because it's possible to draw different conclusions about him.
The presidential campaign and the transition showed him to be capable of extreme caution and bold strategic foresight; of mixing up line-in-the-sand goals with compromise and manoeuvring; of careful efficiency and sloppy missteps; of supreme confidence but also insight into his limitations.
At 47, he becomes the fifth-youngest president sworn into office. He's new, he was only a junior senator, and he'll be working with people more senior and experienced. Can he retain control over his agenda? Can he expand into the role and turn his time into a historically great presidency? Will he be too cautious?
Obama's tendencies to occasionally over-reach in ambition and get splattered with the mud of slightly dodgy associations have also continued from the campaign into the transition.
And his peace offering to religious moderates and conservatives - in an attempt to build a centrist well of support - went too far in his invitation to Pastor Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation.
Handing such a major role to a man who compared gay people to child abusers was a distasteful poke in the eye to liberal supporters, whatever the shrewd symbolism of papering over differences.
As for associations, disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevic joins the colourful wild bunch of the Rev Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko and William Ayers.
But Obama was also a campaign leader who smashed all fundraising records, wielded a revolutionary political organisation and withered the challenges of a pair of formidable senators - former First Lady Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain. He may have stepped too far with faux Greek convention columns and Berlin rallies but he got the big calls right.
Mostly it was the confident, careful strategist who drove the transition and will - hopefully - steer policy in the White House.
The transition set the scene of what is to come, by being completely unlike any before it.
For the last three months, a deeply unpopular Bush has occupied, but not commanded, the most powerful seat in the world - mostly unlistened to and largely irrelevant. There has been an impatience in the air to press fast-forward and get the new era started.
Obama assembled a proposed administration team in record time. Bill Clinton made his first 1992 transition announcement in mid-December. This time, all the major wheels were bolted on before Christmas. Confirmation hearings got under way this week.
Obama wanted experience and competence to deal with the recession, two wars and urgent social and environmental reform and he hasn't been afraid to appoint those with personalities as large as their talents.
Hillary Clinton is Obama's nominee for Secretary of State. Robert Gates stays on as Secretary of Defence. Former general and Nato commander James Jones will be National Security Adviser.
Former Treasury chief Larry Summers will be the Chief Economic Adviser at the White House with New York Federal Reserve chairman Tim Geithner the new Treasury Secretary - as long as he clears up unpaid tax affairs - and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is the health tsar.
Inadequate vetting saw New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, a former UN Ambassador and Energy Secretary, named and then forced to withdraw as Obama's pick for Commerce Secretary because of a federal probe into a state contract. His dispatch suggests the bar has been set at zero tolerance for anything smelling of sleaze.
It's a two-tier Cabinet with an inner ring of gnarly-handed and clear-eyed realists.
The outer ring of less familiar names - such as Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson - has a more experimental, Washington-newbie look.
Obama has also made a special appointment in energy, Carol Browner. "Carol understands that our efforts to create jobs, achieve energy security and combat climate change demand integration among different agencies, co-operation between federal, state and local governments and partnership with the private sector," Obama said.
Admiral Dennis Blair is the "outsider" pick for national intelligence. Perhaps the most interesting selection is Leon Panetta, a former Clinton Chief of Staff and experienced manager/politician, at the CIA, despite lacking a background in intelligence work.
Obama originally wanted former CIA official John Brennan as the agency's director. When that move proved unpopular with left-wingers because of Brennan's past support for harsh interrogation techniques and rendition, Brennan withdrew from contention and Obama avoided a confrontation with his supporters. But he squeezed his man in anyway - as the top White House homeland security and counter-terror adviser. It's an illustration of how Obama can operate.
The current head of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, will stay in an advisory role and the CIA's current deputy, Steve Kappes, will remain.
"We must insist on assessments grounded solely in the facts, and not seek information to suit any ideological agenda," Obama said. "And we know that to be truly secure, we must adhere to our values as vigilantly as we protect our safety - with no exceptions."
Obama's decision to stir fresh blood into his spook pot while keeping some old hands suggests that while he'll work within the rules, he'll also still be prepared to push them. On Pakistan, Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden, Obama's approach is broadly the same as Bush's, if not more hawkish.
The new man hasn't been overly loyal. The biggest job any of his old foreign affairs advisers managed to nail in the administration was Susan Rice as Ambassador to the United Nations.
Senator John Kerry - who gave Obama his big break at the 2004 Democratic Convention, endorsed him early and was eyeing Secretary of State - gained a big fat zero, although he will have Vice-President-elect Joe Biden's old foreign affairs chairmanship as compensation.
As far as the broad swathe of middle America is concerned, it's so far so good.
"In uncertain times, Americans find it comforting that the people who are going to be advising the president are steeped in experience," Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker told AP. "A Cabinet of outsiders would have been very disquieting."
An AP-GfK poll taken in mid November found that about 72 per cent of respondents were confident Obama could revive the stalling economy. That figure included 44 per cent of Republicans, nearly all Democrats and most independents.
A Gallup poll in early December showed 69 per cent approval for Clinton as Secretary of State and 80 per cent backing Obama's decision to retain Gates at the Pentagon. The same poll found that 78 per cent of Americans approved of the way Obama was handling his presidential transition.
Reaction from analysts and commentators was mixed, with some high praise across the spectrum but warning calls - at least initially - from the left that Obama has stuck too narrowly to a centrist path with his senior Cabinet picks and that there is little guarantee of fresh ideas in the new government. Too much cautious safety, not enough experimentation.
Their main arguments were:
There are no "progressive" liberal voices among Obama's economic and foreign/ security teams. This doesn't look like the change Obama promised.
There is too much baggage. The economic advisers are proteges of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and are tied to the deregulatory past. Geithner, as president of the New York Federal Reserve, was involved in the key bailout decisions last year. Key foreign/security officials voted for the Iraq war. Gates is a holdover.
Specifically there are too many centrist Clinton Administration retreads and that may have implications for policy implementation.
Doug Bandow, a former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, told the Daily Telegraph: "The tone, image and symbolism will be different, and he will have more interest in multilateral solutions [than Bush]. But I don't see evidence of dramatic change."
Bandow said that Obama has not shown much sign of appreciating that "we have entered an age where the US can't dictate to the world any more" and that the US can no longer afford its global military role.
"Pulling back is not popular among Washington's elite, but in survey after survey it is popular among the public," Christopher Preble, the head of foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told the Daily Telegraph.
He added: "Do we need so many troops in Germany two decades after the end of the Cold War?"
Obama has also "failed to appoint people who would offer a fresh perspective", said Preble.
On the surface it may have appeared that Obama, with his senior Cabinet selections, has allowed his election campaign opponents' slogan of "experience" to trump his own - winning - call for "change".
But Obama believes he can blend both great political strands. And he has given himself no wriggle room to fail.
"What we're going to do is combine experience with fresh thinking. I understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost; it comes from me. That's my job, is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure then that my team is implementing."
This view of Obama as agent in chief of change was foreshadowed by adviser David Axelrod. "He's not looking for people to give him a vision. He's going to put together an administration who can effectuate his vision."
As the New York Times' John Harwood commented: "That breezy formulation disregards the received wisdom of Pennsylvania Avenue. For years, Washington insiders have used the phrase "personnel is policy" for the assumption that the prior loyalties and political tastes of a president's Cabinet and White House staff heavily influence what those appointees are eager, or able, to get done."
Obama has openly talked about assembling a modern version of President Abraham Lincoln's "team of rivals" to avoid what the President-elect called "group-think" in the White House.
Again, at first blink, that's a change from Obama's highly disciplined campaign style where "No Drama Obama" became a saying and there was a preference for staffers and advisers with medium-sized egos.
The Bush Administration in its first term, critics say, had a deadly combination of clashing big guns - Colin Powell versus Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney with Condoleezza Rice in between - and an intellectually incurious president who wanted to be agreed with.
Although Hillary Clinton, Gates, Biden and Jones would appear to have at least as much firepower, Clinton is reportedly well respected by Republicans and the military brass for her work on the Senate Armed Services Committee. She is said to get on with Biden, who advised both Democrats during the primary campaign. Gates and Jones are pragmatic, respected across the parties.
"No drama" - in a Cabinet sense - appears to mean "no ideologues".
Still, as with his pledge to provide the administration's vision, Obama is trusting himself to get these potentially circling cats purring in unison.
Stephen Biddle, a defence expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Time: "You look at the team that George W. Bush brought in, and they also were very talented and experienced people. It turned into a disaster because the President did a very poor job managing his staff and couldn't resolve disputes among his people."
Obama's personal approach is the opposite of the anti-intellectualism of Bush. Obama is someone who likes to test his instincts against rigorous perimeters. He wants to push through his ideas and agenda but he wants them squeezed and tossed through the washer on the way.
Before the election, an old Chicago law school colleague of Obama's, Professor Cass Sunstein, related a story on Politico.com about how Obama had called him to chew through the various angles over Bush's surveillance of international telephone calls between Americans and suspected terrorists.
"Obama wanted to consider the best possible defence of what Bush had done. To every argument I made, he listened and offered a counter-argument. After the issue had been exhausted, Obama said he thought the programme was illegal, but now had a better understanding of both sides.
"Many prominent Democratic leaders had already blasted the Bush initiative as blatantly illegal. He did not want to take a public position until he had listened to, and explored, what might be said on the other side.
"He took the law exceedingly seriously, and wanted to get the statutory and constitutional provisions right.
"This is the Barack Obama I have known for nearly 15 years - a careful and even-handed analyst of law and policy, unusually attentive to multiple points of view."
Obama's ability to imagine himself adjudicating on the world's problems like a 21st-century Solomon suggests a hubristic confidence in his own intellect and temperament. He wants the best around him and also believes he can handle the best.
As the captain, he absolutely has to be a good enough all-rounder both to lead and to talk with authority to his specialists. It's also a strength not to fear others' abilities and to have the insight to acknowledge he doesn't have all the answers.
During the campaign, especially before he became the official Democrat candidate, Obama often appeared to view issues and situations from an independent voter's non-ideological vantage point rather than a more blinkered party partisan.
He's grown up in the era where scepticism of authority and of political parties of all stripes is the prevailing mindset.
His campaign drew from the disaffected masses at least some people who previously couldn't feel inspired to be Democrat activists but could be activists for Obama.
Despite the John McCain campaign's attempts to cast him as a pinko scarecrow, Obama has a missionary zeal to plot common ground.
In The Audacity of Hope he wrote: "Unfortunately, too often in our national debates we don't even get to the point where we weigh these difficult choices. Instead we either exaggerate the degree to which policies we don't like impinge on our most sacred values, or play dumb when our own preferred policies conflict with important countervailing values."
He railed against the view "that we're doomed to fight the same tired partisan battles over and over again" and famously wants America to be "a country that no longer sees itself as a collection of red states and blue states".
Obama knows that the vast majority of voters want to move on from Congressional red-against-blue-corner rumbles and would prefer a Cabinet in shape for a working bee rather than ready for a theory test.
He's set the overalls-and-gumboots tone early. It goes without saying he will need results to make good his gamble that this is a team that gets things done.
But his approach fits with our newly frugal times of sweat and toil where corporate jets, bulging bonuses and even chalking anything up on credit is frowned upon.
Commentators who have pointed out that Obama has only appointed two Republicans - and one of them, Gates, may actually be an Independent - after vowing to be post-partisan, have missed the point.
Obama has appointed Democrats to key positions whom Republicans and Independents can feel comfortable with. He has ripped up the "too liberal" and "not like you and me" labels the Republicans tried to strangle him with during the campaign. He has spread his tent all over the middle ground and made the Republicans look - for now - rather irrelevant.
Former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich told the New York Times: "I think the country is so tired right now of a style of Republican attack politics that has become a caricature of itself, they instinctively go, 'I'm tired of that'.
It's ineffective against Barack Obama right now. The country is faced with serious problems and is about to have a brand new president. You'd have to be irrational not to want the new president to succeed."
America's traditional inclination to rally behind the new chief has added to his stature. But even so, the honeymoon has started early. The general Blitz spirit of the times plays a part. He's also the first black president, relatively young and charismatic. The glow may prove to be longer-lasting than previous new dawns.
Essentially he has two years - before he has to think about his re-election campaign - to make the most of the welcome mat.
Keeping his fringe party activists on board while straddling the mammoth centre will be a major challenge.
Obama will need their enthusiastic support to gain a second term. Progress by then on bringing troops home from Iraq, closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, improving America's standing in the world and climate-change issues are simply non-negotiable for that to happen.
Obama shows every sign of being serious about trying to achieve some major policy goals and reform:
His planned stimulus is bold in its vision of trying to ferment a new economic/energy wave rather than just treat the immediate problem.
He has said there will be a tougher regulatory and enforcement approach to the financial system.
His selection of Daschle as a health reformer is clearly an attempt to learn from Hillary Clinton's failures in her husband's first term.
He has selected firm critics of Bush Administration policy at Justice and Energy and as science advisers. He created an influential position in energy. This simply wouldn't happen if he wasn't seeking policy changes.
Gates has publically signalled that planning is under way on the Iraq withdrawal.
But aside from new impetus on global warming and possible movement on Cuba - Obama wants to lift restrictions on family travel and cash remittances and possibly talk to President Raul Castro - major change in a general sense will be difficult to achieve with foreign affairs.
The neocons have long been banished. This new bunch will essentially build from the base of the pragmapolitik implemented under the Rice/Gates regime over the past two years. The tortuous diplomatic dance with North Korea is almost a prototype for Obama's projected path.
The assertion of diplomacy has been welcome after Bush's volcanic first term. But has Obama got the balance right between continuity and the chance to shake the status quo?
By relying so much on Clinton Administration experience, he is by extension relying a great deal on the adage of learning from experience. Perhaps he has no choice.
In light of the Bush years, the Clinton era seems a haven of multilateralism and reasonableness, but there were failures. It's remembered for the tightly-prosecuted (in comparison to Iraq) Balkans conflict; near success in the Middle East; and a positive influence in Northern Ireland.
But there was also genocide in Rwanda and the Black Hawk Down incident; al Qaeda attacked in Africa and flourished in Afghanistan; and nuclear weapons spread to Pakistan and India.
Even with Obama's roll of the dice in selecting Hillary Clinton, the signs are that his priority is an essentially competent approach that restores some respect for America in the world with as few foreign dramas as possible.
When the Georgia conflict erupted during the election campaign, his initial response, made while on holiday in Hawaii, was nuanced and called for both sides to show restraint - in recognition of the fact that Georgia actually sparked the conflict with Russia by attacking South Ossetia. When McCain grabbed the issue with his "we're all Georgians now" line, Obama hardened his own stance against Russia.
Missile defence may get quietly put on the backburner for cost reasons and because it is such a stumbling block with Moscow.
Obama responded to criticism of his willingness to talk to Iran's leadership with soothing qualifications about "preparations" and becoming more overtly supportive of Israel on Middle Eastern policy.
Obama plans to make a speech in an Arab country within his first 100 days but, whatever the "outreach" to Muslim countries, the US commitment to Israel looks as unshakeable as ever. Both Clinton and Middle East envoy Dennis Ross are known as strong supporters of Israel.
However, some commentators suggest Obama may take a more independent line. The Guardian reported that the new administration will probably try to make contact with Hamas at a low level, although the story was publically denied. Obama is likely to at least be more even-handed and measured in tone with comments on the region than Bush.
The Israeli-Hamas/Palestinian conflict may look clearly defined to supporters of either side but to everyone else it's a bafflingly complex fog that's a dragging weight on relations between the West and the Middle East.
Obama and Clinton stayed utterly silent on Gaza during the initial week of air strikes. While Israel tanks were lumbering across the border, Obama was addressing economic issues in his weekly address. Perhaps it was prudent - they need at least the illusion of a fresh start as they pick up the pieces. Or perhaps it was just recognition of their very limited options.
They will probably try to nudge Israel and Syria back into talks. If Obama and Clinton are serious about restoring America's standing in the world, the Palestinian issue will need a very early airing. Or it will soon be Obama's face carried aloft on placards by protesters, not Bush's.
The appointment of Richard Holbrooke as envoy for Pakistan/Afghanistan illustrates its importance to the new president.
In Iraq, everyone's withdrawal timetables - Baghdad's, Washington's and Obama's - have been broadly in sync for some time.
Change, if it happens, will be from within the same basic framework. But is a predominant steadiness enough?
Will cautious incremental progress come to seem like inertia? Can the world hope for some advance in Zimbabwe, Darfur, Somalia and the Congo, while Afghanistan, Iraq, the Middle East and North Korea gobble most of the oxygen? Will there be enough forward thinking to keep America ahead of a more influential China?
Clinton as Secretary of State is the great unknown. She had the intelligence, experience and standing to have been a very good president. But now her fate is entwined with Obama's.
She has experienced people to advise her and a well-thumbed contact book stretching back to her days as first lady. Short of appointing a former president as secretary, Obama could not have found anyone with more mana. She was the most admired female politician in the world and now it's made official. She appeals as someone who will provide more punch after Rice's graceful steel.
But just how good is she at the arm-twisting arts in foreign capitals? Does her failed presidential run suggest she lacks the strategic ability to go with her policy librarian's brain? And how many accidental grenades will her husband toss in her path?
For Obama, the job description looked tough enough back in November when he found out it was his.
Since then, job losses have accelerated, ugly terrorism has blighted Mumbai and the Middle East war without end has flared again.
Having nervously screwed up the courage to step into the future with him, the American public has swelled with relief and pride that he's looking and acting the part.
He will bring new tones to political and cultural life in a way that we have so far only caught a glimpse of.
It is the outside world and those known unknowns and unknown unknowns - to quote Donald Rumsfeld - that are likely to disrupt Obama's dreams of an orderly swing away from the Bush years.
He may want to concentrate on righting the boat at home but he won't be able to ignore raging swells out in the deeper blue.
