Consult Mallowe

Let’s hope Barack Obama had a great time in Hawaii, mourning the passing of his grandmother and enjoying some dad-and-husband time on the beach on the rich side of the big island.

The rest of us are enduring one of the coldest, most dangerous winters of the new century, waiting anxiously for him to save us.

The much gloried New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt really didn’t work in economic terms. It was just too little, too late.

It offered a nice emotional and psychological lift for a badly demoralized America, but the prolonged neglect perpetrated by Herbert Hoover and the congressional Republicans in the face of the growing Great Depression had simply done way too much damage.

This should sound extremely familiar. Wasn’t that George W. Bush, the lamest of ducks, telling an interviewer that he had not yet made up his mind about saving the American auto industry last week?

What’s he waiting for? Another Muslim country to invade; or the sight of Rome/Washington burning as in the time of Nero? No wonder most Republicans pretend he doesn’t even exist.

President-elect Obama’s massive public works project, as announced, is certainly a nice, much-needed idea, but its immediate prospects for success seem just this side of laughable.

Too many suddenly jobless Americans who are in the process of losing their houses just can’t wait for some nebulous public works project to turn things around.

Franklin Roosevelt found this out to his regret, brilliant and innovative as his plans were. Thus far, Barack Obama has shown us neither brilliant nor innovative.

Roosevelt needed the event of World War II breaking out to create our national myth of full employment. Obama won’t get that.

Either we will continue to fight small colonial wars (call them “Crusades”) against Muslim fanatics (aka “terrorists”), or the whole world will become consumed in some kind of unimaginable Armageddon. I vote for the new Crusades.

Either way, Barack Obama needs considerably more than road and bridge building to save his fellow Americans.