Lincoln, after facing crushing defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville when the Confederate army under Robert E Lee routed his much larger Army of the Potomac, then faced into a general election with defeat near certain as he plummeted dramatically in the polls. All seemed lost as the North grew increasingly war weary with draft riots gripping New York. The response Lincoln chose made the man. He emancipated the slaves, an unpopular move among many of his own, including Irish immigrants, refocused his military and found the means to crush the rebel army at Gettysburg and Vicksberg and invade the South taking Atlanta it's commercial hub, just in the nick of time to save his presidency. Lincoln would later die from an assassins bullet at the zenith of his power but after setting in motion the remarkable mood of reconciliation necessary to bind up the gaping wounds to the union and lay the foundations of the modern USA which would go on to play such a vital role in shaping our world during the 20th century. On the night Lee surrendered at Appomattox Lincoln ordered the White House musicians to strike up Dixie the rebel anthem- because he always liked the tune. That's what great leaders do, they simply know the way, show the way and go the way. It comes out their pores.

Great challenges turn ordinary men into remarkable leaders. Lincoln was one, so too Churchill but Obama I believe also may yet prove to be another - not because of the colour of his skin, his oratory or his charisma. What makes Obama stand out is his remarkably clear sense of the moment, his vision about what must be done and his willingness to act upon it. This is delved not just out of a deep intellect but a deep intellect allied to an instinctive grasp of the fast flowing undercurrents of what has become an increasingly more integrated , complex and interdependent world. The moment I got Obama was during his acceptance speech in Denver for the Democratic nomination. There Obama mapped out the direction the US must take, singling out energy independence as the top priority, a stunning objective akin to a new moon race.

No world leader had been prepared to call it as it was, that end oil was in sight, that the focus of the nation had to be to wean the worlds largest economy off middle east oil within ten years, at a time when it's military, the single largest user of oil on the planet had invaded Iraq, squeezed between Saudi Arabia and Iran and bubbling with the worlds most dense, transportable and efficient source of energy.

Obama knows that the US must undergo a rapid transformation, that it's military prowess and extraordinary strength in research and development will count for nought until it conquers the next long economic cycle springing out of twilight oil.

But before placing the US on this course he must first grapple with a vastly over-borrowed economy where the Federal Government owes $14.3 trillion to it's creditors. There's a thousand billion in a trillion and in the five minutes you take to read this article the US, printers of the world reserve currency, will add another $100 million to the pile if it hasn’t yet hit the new legal limit on the US defdicit. Thats why gold keeps rising.

The US is out of road. It cannot continue to borrow, doubling it's national debt over the past two presidential terms. That means austerity, US style. So how do you increase taxes in a country whose revolution sprang from a tax on tea, where the great American dream is founded on small Government and the freedom from high taxes? The opposing road would mean hurting the most vulnerable in the US by swinging cuts in Federal programmes for the jobless, low paid, infirm and in poor health.

It's not just the Americans who get it. One of the worlds leading credit rating agency recently put AAA rated US treasury debt on negative watch, that means an imminent downgrade unless action is taken.

The decline of the dollar as the worlds most traded currency and a diminution in the value of US treasuries as the worlds safest haven is a game changer. What happens after nobody knows.

But what Obama knows is that the key to maintaining US economic power in the shifting sands ahead as newly industrialised countries flex their combined economic muscle to challenge the US position as the powerhouse of the global economy, means first solving the energy puzzle. That means sparking a new race, this one not to the moon but to the breakthroughs in energy efficiency technologies and production that will drive the next industrial revolution that Obama senses is just forming.

Whether Obama can overcome these extraordinary challenges and set an entirely new direction for the US is, as yet unclear, but one thing is certain ; if he does prevail history will place him in the same corridor as Abraham Lincoln. That, I hope for all our sake, is his destiny.

- Eddie Hobbs