In a few weeks Barack Obama will inherit the mantle of the capitalist system. What will he do with this responsibility? That’s the question being asked everywhere.

Since the election, and up until President Bush’s important G-20 speech, stock markets sold off nearly 15 percent. Investors want to know if economic rewards will be encouraged or penalized. Will trade remain open and free? Will we maintain competitive businesses that can compete worldwide? Or will we resort to the protection of ailing or failed businesses?

Will the U.S. lurch toward the semi-socialism of Old Europe? Or will we stay with free-market capitalism? Will we expand the nanny-state economy? Or will we keep the door wide open to entrepreneurial spirit and gales of creative destruction?

Investors want to know which way President-elect Obama is going to go. Might he reach back to the Democratic pro-growth supply-side policies of John F. Kennedy’s tax cuts, free trade, and strong dollar? Will he opt for Bill Clinton’s free-trade and strong-dollar policies, or even his capital-gains tax cut? Or will he fall back to the hopeless government tinkering of Jimmy Carter or the welfare-statism of Lyndon Johnson?

I’m keeping an open mind on Mr. Obama during this post-election honeymoon period. After all, he stole the tax-cut issue from Sen. McCain during the election. And surely he knows the conservative red states that joined his campaign for change didn’t vote for a leftward lurch to socialism lite.

Mr. Obama has a huge opportunity and an outsized responsibility to mend and revive the economy. It may be too much to ask, but perhaps he will give President Bush’s marvelous speech a close read. There is much wisdom there. And there is no iron-clad reason why a Democrat can’t adopt the economic-growth model that has worked so well and so long for this country.