A year of hope and change and the biggest change is?

It was a year ago that President Barack Obama was inaugurated as the 44^th President of the United States.

According to Nicola Lamb in this mornings Herald not much has changed

On a personal level, Obama would appear to float above the tongue-tortured Texan. Rhetorical gusts, much less flights of fancy, were beyond Bush, whereas Obama puts the 'o's in oratory.

And yet for Obama, trudging through a landscape still strewn with Bush-era mines, it has been tough going - and not just because of the policy problems he inherited from his predecessor.

Continuity with the old administration marked the past year more than change from it.

But even as I write this a remarkable change is taking place and it is a change that President Obama can take a lot of responsibility for.

And that is the election of a Republican to Senator Kennedy's old senate seat and by a massive margin by the looks of it.