Chance for a new beginning the world should embrace

A change has come to the world. Barack Obama's inauguration as the 44th president of the United States has ushered in a new age. Exactly what this means is difficult to define and where we are headed is uncertain. What is clear is that a seismic shift in history is under way and riding on it are our highest hopes. Driving our expectations are a series of global crises, foremost among them the financial meltdown, climate change and terrorism. Mr Obama is taking office promising to deal with each, capping his pledges with the catch cry, 'Yes we can'. He has no top-level leadership experience and we have nothing but his rhetoric and high-profile cabinet choices to assure us. Regardless, there is no more qualified person for the job. Politics put him in office and no matter who he is there will be those who love or loathe him because of that. But there is no getting away from his being a breath of fresh air to a position that has had more lows than highs of late. None of his predecessors in the past few decades has taken office amid so much hoopla. A recent New York Times/CBS News poll showed that 79 per cent were optimistic about the Obama presidency; never before have so many people turned out on the streets of Washington to celebrate the swearing into office of a new commander-in-chief. There is good reason for the euphoria. Mr Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their two young daughters are the first family of colour - specifically, African-American - to reside in the White House. Racial barriers have come down, although they have not been shattered. Nonetheless, for minorities in the traditionally Anglo-Saxon United States, there is now renewed belief in the tired old cliche about the American dream - that anything is possible. The world over, people of minority ethnic, religious and social groups sense a wind of change. But the dawning of the Obama era is a turning point for us all. We have not before seen his likes at the helm of the world's most powerful nation. There are shades of Bill Clinton in him, but he is even more charismatic. Those old enough recall John F. Kennedy, with whom he shares the same grace and sense of humour, and a bearing that borders on that of a movie star. He has the oratorical skills of civil rights leader Martin Luther King and the intelligence of Theodore Roosevelt. His speeches and writings - two autobiographies chief among them - are compared to the mighty ones penned by Abraham Lincoln. Not since the Kennedys has there been so young a family in the White House. Mr Obama appears to be a devoted father. His wife is elegant and smart. Their daughters are bubbly and cute. But it is his background that is the most compelling reason why we should put our faith in him. His upbringing is full of tragedy. They are hurdles that should have kept him down, mired in the poverty in which he spent most of his formative years. Instead, he picked himself up after each fall, brushed off the dirt and bounded ahead; he is now the most powerful person in the world. He was born in Hawaii to a black Kenyan man and a white woman at a time when mixed-race relationships were frowned upon and even illegal in parts of the US. His parents separated when he was two years old and divorced in his third year in 1964. He barely knew his father, whom he saw only once more and who died in 1982. His mother then married an Indonesian and the family went to live in Jakarta in 1967. In his fifth year of schooling, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. In his first book, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, published in 1995, he wrote that he used alcohol and drugs during his teenage years to 'push questions of who I was out of my mind'. Despite this, he got himself through college and became the first black editor of the esteemed Harvard Law Review. After graduating from Harvard, he went into organising social groups, law and teaching at the University of Chicago. Then there were eight years in the Illinois state Senate before he won election to the US Senate in 2004. But it was only when he gave the keynote speech at the Democratic Party convention that year that others believed in his long-held dream of one day becoming president. His toppling of pre-poll favourite Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican contender John McCain proved that he is no ordinary politician. There is no certainty that Mr Obama will be a great president - only after he serves his term will we have an inkling. Global hostilities, racial divisions, generational tensions and national rivalries will not end or disappear simply because of who he is or what he says and does. His pledges may yet turn out to be nothing more than rhetoric. But there is no doubt that with his inauguration, the US and the world have a chance for a new beginning. Given our challenges, this is something we should embrace with gusto. Historic day Obama's inauguration by the numbers The price, in US dollars, of a seat at the swearing-in ceremony being advertised by one online ticket broker: $8,249 The number of portable toilets distributed on the National Mall: 5,000 The number of buses that city transportation and Secret Service officials expected to ferry people to Washington: 10,000 The total number of military personnel on duty or on standby: 32,000 Number of free tickets for the swearing-in ceremony on Capitol Hill: 240,000 The number of people expected to view the inauguration from the National Mall: 1m The chilly daily high temperature in degrees Celsius in Washington: -1