The biggest challenge facing the next president likely will be unifying the United States and setting clear goals for the country, members of a Chattanooga Times Free Press discussion panel said.

“We haven’t had a goal as a people in I don’t know how long,” said Bob Hartje, 59. “It would be nice if we could get Congress working together with the president to come up with a bipartisan contract with America.”

A group of nine Chattanooga residents assembled at the Times Free Press last week to discuss the challenges facing the new president. U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., are vying to take the oath of office Jan. 20.

The new president must put together task forces to deal with the big issues, such as the war in Iraq, energy, the economy, immigration and health care.

“Leadership isn’t just reading the polls, figuring out where the people are and recapitulating and regurgitating what the people said,” Mr. Hartje said. “It’s figuring out where you have to be and figuring out how to tell the nation to get there.”

Rose Martin, 49, said compromises will have to be made to bring about unity.

“You have to take the best out of the concepts, blend it together for something that works for the country collectively,” she said.

She agreed that the country’s leaders need some sort of road map that lays out solutions for those issues, and they also must get past personal and parochial political agendas.

But Michael Blank, 35, said politicians will be hard-pressed to compromise.

“The profit is always in extremes, not in the center,” he said. “That’s where they’re going to go.”

Likewise, said Matt Davis, 21, politicians are afraid of bucking their parties.

“They’re very careful and they’re very safe,” he said.

Vivian Barrera, 37, said in a telephone interview that the public, too, may have a tough time overcoming its ideological differences.

“We are, as a nation, afraid of change,” she said.

Several Republican candidates for Congress have expressed worries that an Obama victory could have a coat-tail effect on congressional races, with Democrats replacing Republican congressmen. That could lead to a lockstep, partisan agenda with a Democratic president and Democrat-controlled Congress, they said.

Ms. Barrera said Sen. Obama, if elected, would need to avoid that.

“It depends on what he does with his Cabinet,” she said.

A bipartisan Cabinet, which could include Republican Obama supporters such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, would help, Ms. Barrera said.

The panel also discussed the Iraq war and talked about the need for expertise in figuring out how to end it.

“We need to get people like Nobel Prize winners in there as advisers,” Mr. Blank said.

Jarred Clemons, 19, said he is simply scared about the prospect of possibly having to go to war.

“Call me a punk, call me whatever, but I don’t want to go to war,” he said.