Great expectations: Obama will have to deliver

Global, domestic turmoil and wars top new president's list of challenges

                                                                  Morry Gash / AP
President-elect Barack Obama at Grant Park in Chicago on Tuesday night.

WASHINGTON - Over and over, Barack Obama told voters if they stuck with him "we will change this country and change the world." They did, and now their expectations for him to deliver are firmly planted on his shoulders.

Many supporters greeted his victory with euphoria. Impatient for a new American era and overcome by a black man's historic ascension to the White House, they took his achievement for their own — weeping, dancing in the streets, blaring happy horns into Wednesday morning.

But campaign rhetoric soon collides with the gritty duties of governing, and hard realities stand in Obama's way.