By the time lunch is over today, President-elect Barack Obama will be President Obama.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill, this is not the end of his journey – simply the end of the beginning.

For the next four years, the weight of the world will be on this slender man's shoulders, with expectations that would cripple a lesser man, not least because his words and accomplishments have captivated a nation and world like no other politician of this generation.

Indeed, before he has spent a day in office, Barack Obama is being compared with some of the greatest US Presidents – Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Kennedy and Reagan.

That's heady company, and it is fair to say that the simple act of electing him, the first African American to hold the office, places him in the panoply.

How he uses those expectations and the euphoria throughout the US and the world will be his first test.

It is also being said that he faces challenges as heavy as any to face a president. That's not exactly so. Washington had the task of forging a nation out of 13 argumentative former colonies. Lincoln faced civil war. Franklin Roosevelt faced first the Great Depression and then a world war.

President Obama faces two wars, both fraught with risks, but neither posing the threat to the security of the US that Japan and Germany did in 1941.

And President Obama faces an economic crisis as severe as any in most people's living memory. But it is nowhere close to the scale of the Great Depression, at least not yet.

In fact, 2009 seems closer to 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office. Reagan took office when the US was undergoing a similar crisis of confidence to the one it is facing now.

Then, the US seemed powerless to rescue its citizens from its embassy in Iran. Today, the US is trying to extricate itself from an unpopular war in Iraq and to win a difficult conflict in Afghanistan.

Then, the US was facing the twin spectres of a stagnant economy and runaway inflation. Today, the US has a financial system seemingly in meltdown and an economy spiralling into recession.

Then, the voters had rejected the philosophy of President Jimmy Carter and the Democrats. Today, the voters have rejected the Bush Administration and the philosophy of the Republicans.

Then, Americans had lost confidence in their ability to progress and solve the problems facing the country and the world. Much the same can be said of today.

Both Reagan and Obama have the character to inspire and to restore confidence, even if their political philosophies are poles apart.

But Reagan proved that he was an immensely practical politician, whose rhetoric often exceeded his actions. President-elect Obama seems to be cut from the same cloth.

What makes President-elect Obama unique is that people of very different political stripes see something of themselves in him. The efforts of both the Progressive Labour Party and the United Bermuda Party to claim Barack Obama as their own are evidence of this.

President Obama is too good a politician not to recognise this and will take advantage of it. But he is also too good a politician not to know that he cannot please all the people all the time.

When he speaks today, he will know that he will not be measured by one speech, and that he will have to disappoint some people some of the time.

So part of today's speech will be used to temper expectations. But it should also be a call to action and an appeal to the public to pull together for the common good over the next few months and years.

Few speeches have been awaited with so much anticipation; the betting here is that it will exceed expectations.