Barack Obama, FDR, and Faith

May God bless and keep his little supply-siding soul, for this is the kind of above-the-fold stuff that surely drives John McCain into fits of politically strategic doubt:

Automakers dropped their latest batch of awful sales numbers ... Plummeting home prices have in recent months eliminated jobs for hundreds of thousands of people ... Tighter lending standards imposed by banks in the wake of huge mortgage losses have made it hard for many Americans to secure credit ... Joblessness has accelerated, and employers have slashed working hours even for those on their payrolls.

Those are merely the first few lines from today's New York Times' lead story, confirming a deeply troubled economy. It's a "kind of a chronic rather than an acute pain" that we're in for, said a Lehman Brothers analyst, whose expanding list of new problems -- and let's not forget the consumer effect of soaring gas prices -- edged out mention of the old ones of, say, inadequate but costly health care and a disintegrating infrastructure.

Lucky for Barack Obama, the entire mess has one ownership label plastered all over it: Bush-McCain.

It didn't have to be this way for the Arizona senator; he chose it. He jettisoned his maverick image in the conscious pursuit of Bush's base (talk about a chronic national pain), which necessarily doubled as an open endorsement of Bush's policies.

Bad timing, as highlighted yesterday by Gallup, which found that "about two in three Americans [are] concerned that John McCain would pursue policies as president that are too similar to what George W. Bush has pursued. Nearly half -- 49% -- say they are 'very concerned' about this."

Another way to read that percentage is as a negative rating -- and any pol with negatives that high stands on the verge of personally expanding the unemployment rolls.

McCain's only hope is independents, especially ever since Hillary's once-disaffected Dems started asking, "Hillary who?" But even here, among this generic group, says Gallup, "most are concerned about McCain-Bush similarities, including nearly half who are very concerned." Uh-oh.

All of which leads us, finally, to the one issue I intended to raise this morning exclusively, but obviously have not: Obama's emetic announcement yesterday on extending, with altered provisions, George Bush's faith-based programs.

I didn't, because once again Gallup revealed what the Democratic nominee already knew: "Obama is running as the 'change' candidate, and while that would seem to be the advantageous positioning in an election to replace an unpopular incumbent, there is risk in advocating more change than perhaps Americans would be comfortable with."

Hence Obama's faith-based garbage of yesterday, designed to comfort those whom I regard as the profoundly un-Constitutionally inclined. For them -- McCain's elusive evangelicals, but some of whom might now lean independent -- yesterday was Red Meat Day. Or, one could say, Continuity Day.

For me, and you as well, most likely, it was a political serving that's hard to choke down. "Now, I know there are some who bristle at the notion that faith has a place in the public square," said Obama. Yes, and there are many of us who heave, too, right after the bristling.

But in dark and dispiriting instances such as these, I am reminded of the 1932 election, enveloped, as it was, in even much darker circumstances.

FDR also ran as the "change" candidate, of course, but, to the immense frustration of his left-leaning critics, he never removed his pragmatic hat. He intuitively understood that the American body politic was prone to hankerings for fundamental continuity as well as disruptive change; therefore on the campaign trail he endorsed, for example, Hooverlike inanities (at the time) such as a balanced budget.

The left crucified him in print, but he stuck to his guns. Then he took office, and, in an extension of what he had just done on the campaign trail, he did from the Oval Office whatever he believed was pragmatically necessary -- which included the adoption of Keynesian economics.

FDR never did overcome his harshest critics on the left, nor was he ruffled much. He merely went about his little works, such as saving Western civilization and laying the foundations for an American middle-class miracle.

I think Barack Obama has read some history.