Barack Obama’s first inauguration was festooned with hope and
change. His second, alas, will be freighted with inertia and
foreboding. Over the coming year, Americans will realise just
how little the recent elections have resolved, in spite of a
vigorous debate about the proper size, functions and funding of
the federal government.  In his first campaign for president, Mr
Obama made lots of ambitious promises: to stop global warming,
for example, and turn Washington, DC, into a convivial,
bipartisan place. This time around, chastened by experience, he
limited himself to much more modest goals. He has pledged to
increase domestic oil production, for example, and to slow the
rate of inflation for college tuition. He will doubtless unveil
some policies to those ends, and may even get them approved by
Congress. But the focus of his fifth year in office will be the
fiscal mess America has found itself in.  America’s fiscal
troubles come in two instalments. The first is the “fiscal
cliff”, a mix of tax increases an