In this crisis, there's no man on a white horse who could inspire trust and confidence to ease financial fears. At first, the government couldn't even find a horse to start dragging the system out of the ditch. In times of national stress, Americans usually turn to the White House for reassurance. But President George W. Bush's attempts to provide it haven't registered because he does not inspire trust. His standing had sagged to record lows in the polls even before the financial meltdown, undermining his credibility as the administration tried to chart a way out of it. Fear of financial collapse, not the persuasion of the president, got the $700 billion bailout enacted by Congress. An unpopular president in the waning days of his term can't command the national stage for his frequent efforts to convince Americans better days are coming. For all the economic revival promises of presidential campaigners Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama, they are essentially bystanders. Both supported the bailout, but neither shaped it, and their subsequent proposals tinker with details on a course set by others. If there have been leaders, they have been Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who came from Wall Street to the Cabinet, and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve Board chairman who was a Princeton University economist before he came to the Fed. Both are seasoned, skilled and respected in financial and economic circles. But they do better as offstage experts than as communicators. There have been leaders to inspire trust in other hours of stress. There is the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt after he took office in 1933 amid the Great Depression, the closest parallel to this situation. “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television,” said Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, misstating history although getting the idea right – FDR did inspire confidence. But he wasn't president when the market crashed in 1929, Herbert Hoover was, and FDR's medium was radio, since there was no television. And Roosevelt's crisis leadership was not as flawless as popular history would have it. His campaign previewed major New Deal proposals, but his economic ideas were not consistent. At one point he pledged to cut government spending by 25 percent. Elected, he had to wait four months to take office. He was the last president inaugurated on March 3, before the Constitution was amended to make it Jan. 20. The winter of 1933 was the darkest of the Depression. Congress met in lame-duck session but it could not do anything. Banks were closing, homes and farms were being foreclosed and the federal government was on hold. Roosevelt was not interested in joint efforts that winter with the discredited, defeated Hoover. That is a major difference between the 1933 crisis and the 2008 crisis. The administration has been activist and Congress has acted. Bush said the rescue plan is big enough but “will take time.” It also took a change in the administration plan, to put $250 billion into buying stock in major banks. That follows the lead of British and European rescue efforts. Bush's problem is that people, even Republicans in Congress, are not listening to him. He's on the way out. Roosevelt, on the way in, was inaugurated promising change and action against the Depression. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” he declared. Within hours, Roosevelt ordered a national bank holiday, a nicer way of saying they were being shut for four days to ward off failures. Only sound ones were allowed to reopen. He called Congress into special session. The next night, he delivered the first of his fireside chats on radio, telling Americans the government was providing the machinery for recovery and “it is up to you to support and make it work.” Then came the flood of New Deal legislation, FDR's “Hundred Days.” Roosevelt could not end the Depression; double-digit unemployment persisted until the World War II buildup began, but his programs eased the pain. Despite it, he changed the national mood and remade the role of the federal government. In other troubled times, other leaders emerged to rally Americans. With the economy sagging in the malaise of 1980, Ronald Reagan became the face of conservative change and optimism in defeating President Jimmy Carter. But the economy worsened into the deep recession of 1982, and Reagan's own standing sagged badly, until the economic recovery that enabled him to boast of “morning in America” in winning re-election. In the financial panic of 1907, J.P. Morgan put together a Wall Street bailout largely with private money; President Theodore Roosevelt signed on belatedly and then put his imprint on the solution. He cemented his trustbuster image against “malefactors of great wealth,” the line that outlasted the crisis. It was not always the economy that needed confidence-inspiring leadership. Dwight D. Eisenhower's command in World War II had earned him trust he carried into politics in 1952, and he used it to essentially promise that he would end the war in Korea. He said that if elected, “I shall go to Korea,” and did. An armistice ended the war six months into his presidency. Abraham Lincoln became the face and voice of the Union in the Civil War against the secessionist pro-slavery southern states. John F. Kennedy told Americans of the menace and then the end of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Not even solid leadership can always find the way out of national problems. But when the crisis is in part a lack of confidence in markets and in the lending that fuels the economy, the reassurance of a trusted national leader would help. At this point, there is no one to play the role. – AP __
