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Great Expectations…

November 7, 2008 | Written by Hugh McKinney

The election outcome in the US has represented an extraordinary few days, not only in the US but in the UK and the wider world.

The febrile atmosphere will not last long and the real work, the transition from hope to delivery will quickly sink in.

Now the opportunities become challenges, the promises become realisation and the real danger for any Government becomes expectation over reality.

The ability of any Government to deliver policy depends on an array of factors, some of which are not necessarily in the Government’s control.

Harold MacMillan, the British Prime Minister from 1957-1963, when asked what is most likely to blow a Government off course, famously replied “events dear boy, events” and UK political history is littered with the icebergs of reality ready to tear gaping holes in the hull of HMS expectancy.

There is, however, a real expectation at the start of the Obama Presidency that change will come and that change will be for the better. To deliver anything less would risk being seen as a failure.  However, as Winston Churchill pointed out, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

There is as yet, no sense of the possibility of failure, of unrealised ambition, or even a limit to the ambition and promise that the change represents.

As Churchill also stated “I am easily satisfied with the very best”. As Obama finalises the team around him, the World is at last preparing to be easily satisfied.

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