NOW WHAT...?

WASHINGTON-President Barack Obama is turning from the star-studded, crowd-pleasing pomp of his inauguration to the workaday task of governing a hurting nation of 304 million and meeting the soaring expectations that he and others have put on his shoulders.Twin crises of the economy and Iraq figured to take center stage Wednesday, Day One for the new administration.
"Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, the work begins," Obama declared Tuesday night at the Commander in Chief Ball, one of 10 official black-tie celebrations that kept him up late into the night.The first full day of the Obama presidency promised to be packed, at the White House and on Capitol Hill. It also promised to reveal much about how Obama intends to govern for the next four years, in style and substance.Both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue now are controlled by Democrats, providing a chance for the Obama administration to succeed if he and fellow lawmakers of the same party can work in concert effectively and if divergent Democratic interest groups don't pull the new president in too many directions.The capstone to four days of inaugural festivities takes place at the Washington National Cathedral on Wednesday morning, with a national prayer service that is a tradition dating to George Washington's time. Obama and his wife, Michelle, were to welcome hundreds of members of the public to a White House open house, part of his pledge to make government and those who govern more accessible.A meeting with his economic team was planned to assess his approach and plot the way forward. Taking over the White House with 11 million Americans out of work and trillions of dollars in stock market savings lost, Obama said turning around the limping economy is his first and greatest priority.Congress already has given him a second installment of financial-industry bailout money, worth $350 billion, and is fast-tracking a massive economic stimulus bill of $825 billion or more. Even those bold measures, on top of hundreds of billions in other federal spending over recent months, may not be enough to prevent the recession from growing deeper."Fortunately, we've seen Congress immediately start working on the economic recovery package, getting that passed and putting people back to work," Obama said in an ABC News interview. "That's going to be the thing we'll be most focused on."The war in Iraq that he has promised to end was featuring prominently in Obama's first day as well...

By JENNIFER LOVEN

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As in the days of Noah...