The message from America was loud and clear. Change! Dare we hope? Americans dare, and so must we.

Congratulations to Barack Obama, America’s 44th president and first African-American commander-in-chief. He understood, as no one else did, that the world in general and Americans in particular wanted, needed, change. He understood how to drive home that message and he understood its potential power.

He won on the back of a promise to fundamentally change the way America is run domestically and the way America behaves internationally. In doing so, in inspiring millions in America and millions more around the world, Obama is likely to become an iconic leader before he has even started work.

These are fraught and dangerous times and the Americans cried out for a visionary leader. The greatest danger now, however, lies in the unreasonably high expectations that Obama’s victory will be met with.

The man is, after all, only that.

The challenges are immense and urgent priorities vie for attention. There is the perilous financial situation, something Obama will need to address quickly and decisively and with some unpopular domestic measures, such a increased regulation and increased taxation.

There is the need for a fundamental realignment of the global political order. America is still a superpower, but its behaviour needs to be altered to reflect a world in which power simply is not enough.

Unfashionable concepts such as justice and respect for human rights and international law must be reintroduced onto the world’s agenda.

Washington needs to signal that it is willing to cooperate and do so, even at a price to its freedom of manoeuvre.

There is the challenge of terrorism and the forces of nihilism, both in this region and in the West, forces that seek only war and profit. These must be faced head on, but with understanding rather than ignorance and, most importantly, with consistency.

There will be a period of grace. After all, Obama will become president after what is likely to go down in history as the most calamitous American presidency ever. Hence, everything Obama does differently, for that fact alone, will be better.

It is during this period that Obama will likely find he has the greatest freedom to act as he has spoken, to reach out to countries like Iran, to make clear to Israel its occupation of Palestinian land cannot continue, to begin the endgame in Iraq and to follow through on promises to create a stable Afghanistan.

Finally, congratulations to Senator McCain, who showed, in his hour of defeat, true grace.