The Economist's cover leader this week argues that Obama must now swallow his pride and work with the Republicans. The leader also explores how a budget deal would help the president, his opponents, his country and the world.

But the best part is the cover. It's the most shared image of all time on Facebook, the image that kicked Justin Bieber off the throne of most retweeted image, a candid moment during the campaign where Barack hugs Michelle. Now hug a republican. Make hugs not partisan war?

LET him savour, for a day or two, a victory that many had said could not happen. No president since FDR had been re-elected with unemployment so high. The country seemed pessimistic and bitterly divided, on racial grounds even more than on economic ones. His best-known achievement, health-care reform, had turned out to be deeply unpopular. The Republicans spent $800m trying to remove him. Yet on November 6th Barack Obama carried all the states he won four years ago, bar only Indiana and North Carolina, for a solid victory over Mitt Romney of 332 electoral-college votes to 206; the Democrats tightened their grip on a Senate they had once been expected to lose; and the president gave his best speech for several years.