Greatness needed
Obama has his work cut out, says Gerard Baker. Bill Clinton used to worry to his advisers that he couldn't ever achieve true greatness because there were no big challenges any more. The one thing we can say with certainty is this: if Obama can somehow navigate the US safely and prosperously through the swirling currents of the next four years he will really have a claim to greatness. The biggest political challenge is going to be how to alternately please and restrain a Democratic-controlled Congress. There's a danger and an opportunity in this. The danger is he gets pushed by them towards policies that might be unpopular. The opportunity is that he can, on occasions, stand up to their demands and win credit for his toughness - something President Bush never seemed able to do. Gerard Baker The Times
Full article: Only a great president could cope with all this 
Alexander Cockburn: Obama's grim in-tray
Global solution unlikely
A new Bretton Woods would not have Obama's backing, says Adrian Hamilton. The new President has been voted in by an electorate above all concerned with its own problems of recession. He is not ready to give up America's pre-eminence by ceding power in all sorts of reformed or novel international institutions, from the UN to the World Bank. His primary responsibility is to help his own people through dire times. This applies to all. The way in which countries feel recession individually will stall efforts at a grander programme of controls on capital movements, limits on exchange rate movements and a more supra-national direction of finance. Adrian Hamilton The Independent
Full article: Don't count on a new Bretton Woods
Yes Labour can
Let's be honest, neither David Cameron nor Gordon Brown are instantly recognisable as a British Barack Obama, says Douglas Alexander. There haven't been goat herders in Surrey or Fife for a long time. Yet last week's victory was also a victory for a body of ideas. Relentlessly, Obama made the case for government action in responding to the problems faced in the economy, in energy and environment policy, in education and in healthcare. The University of Chicago gave the world Hayekian free market economies. It took a politician from Chicago to confirm the end to that era of the old Right. As Labour, we always rejected it as the enemy of the good society - but recent months have confirmed it to be the enemy of the good economy, too. Douglas Alexander Daily Telegraph
Full article: Can Labour really win the next general election? Yes, we can
Our underclass
We have always had an underclass, says Camilla Cavendish. We have never tried so hard before to help people out of it. Yet our efforts have backfired. The authorities are so acutely aware that fecklessness and depravity flow from one generation to the next that they can become defeatist. The view that the underclass can't help themselves creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. We must learn from Chicago and Oklahoma, where teenage mothers are taught independence. This is my answer to the defeatists. People who are savvy about milking the benefits system are capable of taking responsibility. Poverty and immorality need not go together. And we must stop institutionalising shamelessness. That is deadly. Camilla Cavendish The Times
Full article: The cries of Baby P must not lead to despair
Just a pretty face
If she wants the Republican nomination in 2012, Palin better keep her figure, says Lionel Shriver. It's all she has. In relying so drastically on her looks, Sarah Palin as female political icon is a giant step backwards. Palin's physical allure is also a throw-back to yesteryear. Sporting a hairstyle circa 1963, she exudes the coy sexuality of Doris Day; this isn't a castrating dominatrix, but a bouncy, unintimidating girl next door with nice legs. Ignorant, inarticulate, evasive, and bizarrely apolitical, for men Sarah Palin is an unthreatening, retrograde female icon, at whom they can leer and to whom they can still feel superior. Lionel Shriver Daily Telegraph
Full article: And Sarah Palin's favourite number is.?.?. 12
Prince of hearts?
The Prince of Wales is 60 years old today, says Alexander Chancellor. It is a moment to overlook the flaws in his character - his petulance and self-pity, for example - and to celebrate instead his achievements, which are considerable. But he chooses his causes badly - they seem like indulgences of the privileged. He cannot cure all the problems of the world, and he would do well to focus his benevolent urges on matters of the greatest popular concern - unemployment, house repossession and other forms of economic hardship. Then, perhaps, he will gather the public support that could one day ensure his succession to the throne. Alexander Chancellor The Guardian
Full article: Even the government is going off the Olympics. Is it too late to give them to the French?
In Brief
Tabloid dishonesty
The tabloids are seen as unfair, negative and untruthful - in the eyes of their own readers, not of some liberal columnist. This ought to be a problem for them, for they defend themselves, as Dacre did again this week, by asserting their civic virtue. Martin Kettle The Guardian
Full article: Tabloid irresponsibility has left us in a civic Catch-22
Not nanny’s fault
How we all hate the nanny state - until nanny takes a day off. Then we want nannies galore. We want nannies with whips, nannies with locks, keys and public inquiries. Yet from the litany of errors revealed at the Old Bailey this week, it seems clear that failures were not of procedure. Simon Jenkins The Guardian
Full article: Officialdom cannot hammer straight the crooked timber of mankind
Advice to Michelle
When your spouse is elected the leader of a country, the dynamic of your relationship is bound to change - even when the partnership has been one of equals as has certainly been the case in the Obama marriage. You have to learn to take a back seat, not just in public but in private. Cherie Blair The Times
Full article: My advice to Michelle Obama: learn to like the back seat
Brown’s bribes
In coming weeks, as Mr Brown struts about the international stage, hoping to pass himself off as a man with a plan, Mr Darling will be hurling a kitchen sink of unfunded tax cuts at the economy in an attempt to secure the only outcome that his boss really cares about: another five years in power. Jeff Randall Daily Telegraph
Full article: Gordon Brown’s fingerprints are all over a disaster made in Britain
Time to get nasty
The public will think the greater of Mr Osborne if he publicly states that the circle of borrowing, spending and tax cuts cannot be squared without cuts to the public sector. This will be the moment when the voters, wrestling with their own nasty personal household spending cuts, might actually be interested in what a "nasty" party has to offer. Michael Brown The Independent
Full article: Cameron must ditch Osborne as Tory shadow chancellor
The Mole: Tory grandees want Osborne moved
Human interest
Max Mosley claimed that grown-up people are not interested in each other's private lives. Yes they are. That's why sex sells. There's a world of difference between the public interest and the public being interested. Hugo Rifkind The Times
Full article: Even old buffers were novices once
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