No one of goodwill could have watched unmoved as tens of thousands of people in Chicago's Grant Park and many more around the country wept for joy last Tuesday night as America elected her first black president.

And no one with a mind even partly engaged could have failed to feel a tremor of fear for those weeping in celebration. With so much of their personal identification and aspiration so clearly wrapped up in the image and achievement of Barack Obama, one must wonder how they -- blacks and whites alike -- will cope if they don't get all the change they hope they can believe in.

Some of Mr. Obama's promised change was so over the top, there's little room left for satire. Upon defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton, he'd prophesied that years from now we'd all say, "This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." There's nowhere to go from the messianic except downhill.

The oceans didn't change, meaning Al Gore still has a career, but one very big thing did: The last grievance of professional racial agitators disappeared. The nation decisively demonstrated there is no barrier left to blacks' political and cultural roles, so long as those blacks aren't conservatives.

"Change" has always been a fatuous campaign slogan, change being inevitable, of course, no matter who's elected. The more pertinent question is what will change, and in what direction?

Finding answers to that question used to fall to journalists, but they were remarkably uninterested in journalism this election cycle. (Reporters' left-wing tendencies buttressed by rampant incuriosity: That's a lack of change conservatives can not only believe in but should plan around for 2012.)

Mere days before the election, various media bigwigs began reflecting on how difficult it is to predict where Mr. Obama will lead, since they know so little about him. In a now-famous exchange, Tom Brokaw told Charlie Rose, "There's a lot about him we don't know" and wondered what books Mr. Obama has read, while Mr. Rose asked, "Do we know anything about the people advising him?"

It's too bad there was no reporting out there for these men to avail themselves of. On the other hand, the willfully ignorant never learn.

The man these deep thinkers still don't know much about made his first and most important appointment Thursday. Mr. Obama, who like John McCain touted bipartisanship but unlike Mr. McCain has no record of it, selected as his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, one of the left's most vicious and effective partisans.

In 1997, The New York Times recounted his vengefulness toward anyone, Democrat or Republican, who'd failed to support Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential bid, for which Mr. Emanuel was chief fundraiser. At a post-victory dinner, he recited a list of the betrayers, chanting "Dead!" and plunging a steak knife into the table after each name.

(Clinton communications director George Stephanopolous participated in this infamous episode yet moved seamlessly to ABC News as a nonpartisan political correspondent. Modern journalism explained?)

In recent years Mr. Emanuel has successfully recruited conservative "blue dog" Democrats around the country to run for office and build the party's congressional majority. Some leftists decry this as ideological compromise, failing to appreciate how powerfully the strategy has worked to propel the most collectivist, big-government agenda in decades.

Mr. Emanuel's pragmatism is clearly in service to staunch ideology. That won't change in the Obama White House.

Here's another thing that won't change: Liberals' insistence that conservatives demonstrate their bipartisanship by lying down for the steamroller.

But if Democrats were truly interested in bipartisanship for the greater good, they wouldn't now be trying to destroy Joe Lieberman for supporting the Iraq surge and therefore John McCain. They were both right, and Mr. Obama was wrong.

Conservatives will surely respect the new president's impressive abilities and the stature of his office. I hope they'll passionately disagree with his agenda as intellectual honesty compels them, while living up to the graciousness of Mr. McCain's concession speech.

Mr. McCain lived his slogan, "Country First," right to the disappointing end. He did so 40 years ago in Vietnam, and he did so when he supported the troop surge in Iraq, nearly ending his nascent candidacy.

The surge's dramatic reversal of America's military fortunes removed the Iraq issue from the forefront of political debate. What was best for the country was not good for Mr. McCain, a recurring fate he's accepted with good cheer.

Knowing when to change and when not to is the essence of wisdom. Like Mr. McCain, I wish Mr. Obama godspeed in that quest.