How can Obama come close to doing all that he promised in his campaign, considering the holes Bush and Cheney have gotten us into? Nope, that’s really not the most critical question.

How can Obama accomplish all that our country needs to be restored to full health? That’s a far better way to frame it. Just forget about honeymoons, hundred day agendas and other relics of the old mindsets. Obama was elected to serve for four years and as a proven wise head at managing his resources and rolling out a measured campaign of achievement, he can certainly utilize a similar approach to governing. Assuming that he’ll have to spend six months seriously campaigning for re-election in 2012, he has 3.5 years to deliver on most of his promises, or about 1275 days. So from the outset, he should drive that home by stating that half his mandate is to deliver on emergency needs in the short term while the other half is to deliver on his platform in 1200 days.

So goal one is to define his own parameters on how he’ll be judged.

Goal two is to deliver immediately on three fronts. First, roll back all the policy directives he can directly control without legislative consent. He should, however, indicate that those rollbacks will be confined to the domestic front in January, while a longer review will be necessary to tackle those that deal with national security and foreign policy.

Second, a short-term economic stimulus package will be delivered to Congress in his first month. It will include relief to the unemployed and small businesses facing a credit crunch, along with aid to state and local governments. But it should be clearly defined as step one on the economic ladder to come, with a March package of tax cuts and incentives, and a May delivery of the federal budget with a call to Congress to act swiftly on each.

It’s going to take several years to fix all our economic woes, but as long as the public can see the swift results producing fruit at each step, it will continue to provide steady support for more economic initiatives to come.

Third, he must deliver on the promise to withdraw our troops from Iraq. The only short term timetable necessary for that is to say that his secretaries of state and defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff and other military advisers have been tasked to produce an outline of how best to achieve an effective and safe drawdown that maintains US and allied interests. And that this task force will deliver that report by the end of February.

But where does that leave healthcare, energy policy, global warming, education and more? As Peter Baker in that NYTimes link wrote:

Mr. Obama’s transition advisers studied how Presidents Roosevelt, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan and Clinton used their first months. The lesson many drew was that even if various agencies moved forward in many directions, a new president must husband his time, energy and political capital for three dominant priorities at most. Several Obama advisers cited Reagan, who concentrated his early efforts on pushing through major tax cuts and increased military spending.

But advisers also worry that putting off sweeping initiatives makes them harder to pass later, when a president’s mandate and momentum have faded. Again, they pointed to Mr. Clinton, who delayed his ultimately doomed health care plan while he passed a deficit reduction package and the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Change should be a hybrid, not a replica of any past president. I agree that three dominant priorities are the best approach, but would argue that each stated priority should be defined as an umbrella that can only keep us properly sheltered when each and every spoke of that umbrella has been unfurled.

That way, tax relief, hardship alleviation, business initiatives, energy policy, infrastructure building and education are all components to building the strongest economy possible. Better regulation to provide safer food, water and air, along with better healthcare, better care of the environment, and steps to reduce global warming all come under the umbrella of protecting the health of individuals, families and the planet. The third umbrella would be foreign policy/national security goals.

So long as he presents the three umbrellas - economic health, personal and planetary health, national security & military strength - and challenges Congress to keep pace with initiatives he’ll unveil at least quarterly in his first 18 months, he should be able to keep the public on board to add pressure on Congress to act.

After that, he could be creative. For instance, he could provide a phased in healthcare program that gets 10 million MORE Americans covered each year, so newborns to 18 year olds are covered by the end of his first year, that 50-to-65 year olds are covered after the second year, that 19 to 30 year olds are covered after his third and that 31 to 49 year olds are covered by the end of 2012. (or some similar phase-in). Similarly, issues like global warming could show up in first year proposals with delivery times set back towards the end of his first term so a stronger economy will be available to foot those bills.

Despite the post-election afterglow, we can’t assume that the Obama administration will have every cure in place as quickly as we’d like or that anything Obama promised is a given. We may not be on his transition team or in his administration, but we remain a vital part of the advising process.

And that, too, is something I hope to hear at his inauguration or shortly after. In addition to challenging Congress to act swiftly, I hope to hear him issue a challenge to us all to remain engaged, to remain vocal and to actively participate in healing and growing our country. We didn’t elect him to be our savior. We elected him to be our leading partner.