Unfortunately, electorates only get a chance to dismiss their governments every four or five years. A lot can go wrong in that time period and it can take a much longer time, sometimes decades, to correct the bad policies of the past.

The problem for a new administration charged by an electorate to correct the errors of the past is that they, having suffered for so long, can be impatient for change. In the real world, change takes time, but the honeymoon for a new government may only last a couple months. The performance of some governments is judged after the first hundred days.

United States President Barack Obama was elected to change many of the policies of the previous eight years, with an underlying assumption that he will have at least four years and maybe eight years in office. An already difficult situation was compounded by the intensification of an unprecedented global economic crisis and an unwinnable war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pursuing his own agenda, such as reform of health care, has been derailed by persistent high unemployment, the decline of traditional sectors (auto industry), financing a huge fiscal deficit by borrowing from external sources and the haemorrhaging of financial resources on wasteful activities.

President Obama started confronting these daunting problems with a 51-49 lead in the US Senate. This lead disappeared in the recent election in Massachusetts which dramatically changed the political balance in a way that could derail his legislative agenda.

More importantly, having to backtrack on health care, the leitmotif of his manifesto, raises the spectre that the president does not have the political support to achieve his goals. This necessitates compromise with political opponents and that makes the administration look indecisive.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding was elected to change many of the policies of the last 18 years with a very small majority in the Jamaican House of Representatives which was being challenged in the courts. He assumed office with an economy suffering the ravages of the global economic crisis.

He inherited the results of years of misguided economic policy manifested in persistent high unemployment, the decline of traditional sectors (bauxite, tourism), financing a huge fiscal deficit by borrowing from external sources and the haemorrhaging of financial resources on servicing an enormous debt. The basket he was given by the previous Government cannot carry the “water” which would enable the Golding administration to implement its manifesto of free education and free health care.

Encumbered by an economic disaster requiring substantial tax increases, public sector layoffs and selling Air Jamaica, a beloved symbol of national pride, the Government has had to compromise on what it was elected to do and clean up the mess left by its predecessor.

Ironically, those who created the mess wait their turn to bat again while watching their successors struggle to move with the ball and chain they shackled the new Government with.

Mr Obama and Mr Golding have three years to climb out of the inherited morass and pursue their own agendas. Politicians must beware of what they wish for because they may inherit more than they had bargained for.