What will President-elect Obama do next?

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WASHINGTON -- Voters gave Democrats the keys to the car Tuesday. Now President-elect Barack Obama has to drive it.The young new president must steer through terrain as treacherous as any his modern predecessors have faced: two wars, a terrorist threat, a dangerously weakened economy and an unthinkable budget deficit. He faces towering expectations on such intractable problems as health care, oil addiction and global warming.In his moment of victory, Obama returned to the themes with which he began his meteoric rise just four years ago, calling for humility and a healing of divides."To those Americans whose support I have yet to earn," Obama said, "I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help and I will be your president, too." He also seemed to relish the challenges ahead. "This is the time you want to be president," Obama told interviewers.It called to mind a lament by former President Bill Clinton that great presidents emerge only from great challenges. And the travails of President Bush, who faced big challenges but will leave office with the lowest public approval rating in polling history.Bush, too, promised unity, but with Republican control of Capitol Hill quickly turned to a politicized and partisan governing strategy that alienated Democrats."I think that's why Bush failed," said St. Louis University political scientist Kenneth Warren. "They can succeed for a while ramming things down people's throats, but it builds resentments and opposition. Any president who decides to go the partisan route is going to fail. It's textbook."Obama will have much larger House and Senate majorities than Bush ever had. Grateful Democrats will give him a long leash, taking direction from a White House they have longed for. Yet many of the freshly elected Democrats hail from red regions. Obama must find a path between a much larger but more conservative Democratic majority and the pent up demands of liberals who have chafed under the Bush presidency. Clinton's mistakes show what not to do. The Democrat quickly blundered into a fiery, distracting controversy over permitting gays to serve in the military. His former chief of staff Leon Panetta warned that Obama should avoid hot-button issues that liberals love but that enrage Republicans. "He needs an early win," Panetta said. "He needs to show that he can get things done. The worst thing that could happen is if he picks the wrong issue and creates either serious division or loses an issue that gets him off on the wrong track."Bipartisanship is never as easy as it sounds. A smaller, divided and more conservative minority is "not going to be easy to deal with," Panetta said. Compromise may sometimes prove impossible. "You can't just do nothing," Panetta said. "That may mean on budget and tax policy he's going to have to rely on Democrats."Early choices can have lasting consequences. Clinton's mishandled roll-out of health care reform, the centerpiece of his agenda, was killed by a Democratic Congress. That failure led to a GOP takeover of Congress just two years after his inauguration.Democratic President Jimmy Carter rode to Washington in 1976 as a reformer with a filibuster-proof Senate and House majority. He soon ran into troubles that would doom his presidency, infuriating powerful Senate Democrats by trying to cut their pork-barrel projects. He was never able to restore relations with Congress and served one term.Obama's biggest priority has already been set, not by him, but by events, with the financial meltdown this fall and the $700 billion rescue plan he will inherit. Obama will take office as a recession is intensifying, possibly severely.He may preside over the nation's first $1 trillion deficit. It will limit his agenda; and immense, continued borrowing could pose a long-term threat to the economy -- and an Obama legacy. One of his first challenges is to get key officials in place long before his Jan. 20 inauguration. A president leads, but his administration governs.Obama plans to name a chief of staff quickly and begin the transition almost immediately. He must name more than 4,000 top political appointees. "Historically, that has taken 16 to 18 months," said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group, "so long that by the time a president is completing his team, the first people who came in are already leaving. That's not good enough for today's world."Obama will have to accelerate that process "beyond what has ever been done before. It is a very large undertaking and it is vital."E-mail Carolyn Lochhead at clochhead(at)sfchronicle.com.(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)