This is going to be a deep and long-lasting depression no matter who is president.

Hope won't work in the short term.

While it depends on how well Obama can get out his message as opposed to how McCain might get his, it's certainly inherent to the current situation that a Democrat should have the clear advantage here.

Basically, Obama has been given an enormous and totally unexpected political gift in the current meltdown on Wall Street. It will turn people's attention to the economy when, to all appearances anyway, Obama's own, unaided efforts seemed to be pretty much going nowhere.

What if the Maverick, as Act II after the Palin surprise pick, throws another Hail Mary and says this: "I said I was going to change "business as usual" in Washington, and I meant it! I needed a partner to help me root out the leeches, sycophants, and bloodsuckers, who drain the life out of our American dreams, hopes, and ideals. At a time when tens of millions of hard working Americans, playing by the rules, find their lives in ruin, their homes taken away, and their futures destroyed; the corporate masters, in cahoots with their Washington partners, line their pockets, leave the companies they were entrusted to protect in ruins, and walk away with billions of dollars. THIS IS WRONG!

I am announcing today that I have met with a highly distinguished group of legal and business experts, and have come up with a plan to TAKE OUR MONEY BACK! Those CEO'S who are found to have put their own interests ahead of the health of the company they were entrusted with, will not only have that money taken back from them, but they will be going to jail for a long, long time. Those executives who obviously were smart enough to land those cushy jobs in the first place should also have been smart enough to know the difference between malfeasance and criminal behavior. Running a company into the ground for short term personal gain at the expense of their company, their employees, their vendors, their shareholders, and their customers will have a long time in an eight by ten room to contemplate what they've done.

When Barack Obama says "change" it's because that's what a speechwriter wrote for him; when John McCain says "change" it's because he knows what "change" the American people want.