WASHINGTON - Americans are a forward-looking people, which is to say they can have the attention span of a gnat. So presidential campaigns seem like distant history almost from the moment someone wins.

It's goodbye, good riddance - and hello to something else.

Yet a big aspect of every campaign lives on, four years or longer: the victor's promises.

Not just hopes and dreams and cross your fingers - though often there is not much more to them than that - but a pact with the people, a set of distinct IOUs.

Now it's collection time.

President Barack Obama paved his path to re-election with fewer promises than in 2008. But the ones he did lay down are meaty, legacy-shaping for him and consequential to ordinary lives today and for generations to come, for better or worse.

They also are extraordinarily difficult to achieve in a time of gridlock grief and budgets that are tight when they are not paralyzed.

He has promised to set a course in law against global warming, stop Iran from gaining the ability to make nuclear weapons, slash America's use of foreign oil, restrain college costs, take a big bite out of the national debt even while protecting the heart of the big entitlement programs, and overhaul immigration law.

He has promised to make health insurance not only universally accessible, but "affordable," through a 2010 health care law that is finally entering prime time and will soon be tested.

It's a sure bet that many who voted Republican want some of Obama's promises to fail. They didn't sign up for tax increases on the wealthy or a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

But as closely divided as the country is, most Americans support Obama's ends, if not the means. Who doesn't want a lighter national debt or better health care for less?

In that sense, everyone's got a stake in seeing him make good on his broad-brush promises.

If this decade somehow becomes the Roaring Teens, history may not care much about a big broken promise or two. If jobs are demolished, that's what will be remembered, not that 9 out of 10 promises might have been kept.

But Obama made a pact with voters, not historians, and he's got IOUs outstanding.

Issue No. 1:Climate change

By DINA CAPPIELLO

Associated Press

Slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases responsible for warming the planet is one of the biggest challenges the United States and President Barack Obama face. The effects of rising global temperatures are widespread and costly: more severe storms, rising seas, species extinctions, and changes in weather patterns that will alter food production and the spread of disease.

Politically, the stakes are huge.

Any policy to reduce heat-trapping pollution will inevitably target the main sources of Americans' energy: the coal burned by power plants for electricity and the oil that is refined to run automobiles.

Those industries have powerful protectors in both parties in Congress who will fight any additional regulations handed down by the administration that could contribute to Americans paying more for electricity and gas at the pump. There's also the lingering question of how much the U.S. can do to solve the problem alone, without other countries taking aggressive steps to curb their own pollution.

The promise:

"My plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet, because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke." - Obama at the Democratic National Convention, Sept. 6, 2012.

The prospects:

Obama has shown he doesn't need Congress to take action against climate change.

In his first term, he struck a deal with automakers to double fuel economy standards. After failing to pass a climate bill through a Democratic-controlled Congress, he proposed rules to control heat-trapping pollution from future power plants.

The president's chances of going through Congress are no better the second time around.

While some liberal Democrats have proposed legislation to tax emissions of carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, Republicans controlling the House have pledged to block any and all efforts to price carbon pollution. Democrats from states with coal and oil probably will be stumbling blocks.

Obama has more tools he can tap to deal with the problem. The big question is how aggressive he will be and how he will balance expanding domestic energy production with his climate goals.

Also looming is a decision whether to grant a permit to the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would transport carbon-laden tar sands oil from Canada to Texas.

Bottom line: Obama is likely to take more steps to reduce the pollution blamed for climate change. But those actions probably will not be of the scale needed to help much in slowing the heating of the planet.