United States ambassador in Sofia Nancy McEldowney, addressing the American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria soon after Barack Obama was named the winner in the presidential election, said: "I am particularly proud to welcome you to a new day for the US, and for its friends and partners around the world".

With every election, a society redefined itself, but for many Americans the November 4 2008 election represented "so much more", she said.

"Some have even referred to it as a fundamental paradigm shift," McEldowney said.

Twenty-four hours previously, as the election began, Americans had gone into it as a nation at war, facing an economic crisis unprecedented in most people's lifetimes, and grappling with social and demographic change. A poll had shown that 90 per cent of Americans had felt that the country was going in the wrong direction.

These challenges and that data explained why so many people had seen the election as more than a contest between two candidates, rather as a struggle for the heart and soul of the country.

Significant aspects of the election had included the first African-American candidate of a major party, the first woman candidate on a Republican ticket and the absence, for the first time in decades, of an incumbent on either ticket.

A hundred and fifty years after the US had abolished the hideous crime of slavery, and 45 years after Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, for the first time an African-American would become president, McEldowney said.

People believed that this election had rewritten the rules on how to raise campaign funds, how to reach out to voters, to shape opinion and how to wage and withstand political attacks.

The internet had played a profound role in the election, she said.

McEldowney said that there would be "no rest for the weary" as the challenges before the elections remained. "Time will contract and demands intensify as inauguration day approaches."

The US would continue to grapple with three issues that had formed the basis of the election, the economy, social identity - meaning how Americans understood the impact of this election, not only in terms of race but also in terms of gender and ethnicity, and third, "how do we define our new politics".

On the last point, she said, questions included the meaning of being a "traditional red state that had turned blue", what it means to a liberal Republican or a conservative Democrat.

There were issues that this election had answered definitively, she said. First was that Americans care deeply about how they are perceived in the world. The second was that Americans of both parties wanted strong partnerships with other countries.

This meant that the strong partnership between the US and Bulgaria that had grown strongly under the Bush administration would now expand and grow and get stronger, McEldowney said.

The US would work together with Bulgaria with great pride in the partnership, she said.

In a lighter aside, McEldowney, again referring to the influence of new technology in the campaign, quipped that most Americans got their news either from the internet or television's satirical Daily Show host Jon Stewart, and it was a "toss up" on which they relied more.