蜜芽传媒

President elect Barack Obama captured the scale of the challenge he faces in 13 words - 'two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a lifetime'. Historians have had to go back to Franklin Roosevelt and Lincoln to find incoming presidents with a more troubled inheritance.

Stephen Sackur talks to Niall Ferguson, a leading historian of the US as a global power, and Jamal Simmons, an influential voice in the new generation of Democratic party activists. How will the audacity of hope translate into the reality of power?