What Obama White House might look like

• The way he has run his campaign might be a pointer to how he will run the economy

Look, when we wake up on Wednesday Barack Obama will be president-elect of the United States. Either that or I know people who swear to leave Planet Earth.

With that out of the way, let us go on and indulge in pictures of an Obama White House. What might it look like?

If you ask a 60-year-old early voter in Georgia, quoted in this paper last week, here’s the summary: “There will be two black little girls running around in the White House, looking for their dog. Imagine that!”

A King’s dream of a non-racial America will finally find reality. It is such moments in history that give a rare glow to politics.

Politics is a dirty game, people often say. In his book, The Audacity of Hope, Obama writes that when he first run for office in 1996 people he talked to often asked him: “You seem like a nice enough guy. Why do you want to go into something dirty and nasty like politics?”

Two months ago in Denver, in a 10-minute tribute played just before he stepped up for his acceptance speech, Obama laid down the fundamental reason for public service.

“You read about some injustice and you say: ‘that’s not right, somebody should fix that.’ Then you realise that nobody else is gonna fix it if you don’t.”

Obama’s politics is based on that simple premise. One of his favourite tasks as senator, he writes, is returning to Illinois for town hall meetings, small gatherings where he answers the people who sent him to Washington — a good thing for Kenyan MPs to emulate.

In the 39 town halls he hosted in his first year in Senate, he says his constituents would come up to shake hands, take pictures, slip things into his hand.

“At times someone will grab my hand and tell me that they are worried Washington is going to change me and that I will end up just like all the rest of the people in power,” he writes. ‘“Please stay who you are,’ they will say to me. ‘Please don’t disappoint us.’”

Will Obama’s White House disappoint his now continent-size constituency? No one knows. For the first time since Franklin Roosevelt the next US president comes in to deal with no peace and no prosperity.

How might Obama deal with an economy in the ditch? The way he has run his campaign might be a pointer.

At his Chicago headquaters, the New York Times writes, people joke that if someone waves a hand in front of the automated paper town dispenser in the toilet, a section of paper towel is dispensed; wave it again and a note spits out, “See Plouffe.”

Campaign manager David Plouffe is legendarily frugal. Yet the Obama team has spared no expense funding aggressive strategies. The next White House is likely to be extravagant in mission and ambition, but frugal in implementation.

Obama might launch an “Apollo project” to build a new economic turbocharger, whatever that might be. But he’ll leave America on the right economic trajectory.