Despair and pessimism accomplish nothing good and can be self-fulfilling. Any successful leader must be optimistic. It's crucial -- just as this particular leader, in the presidency, epitomizes America's abiding promise. Still, we're in a depression. Consumer confidence stands at a 41-year low. The only things Americans seem to be clamoring to buy is gold. Obama proposes, and a rubber-stamping Congress likely will approve.

Doubling federal spending within a year, making millions more Americans dependent on the federal government, and rewarding bad behavior with mortgage bailout plans -- and fueling resentment on a massive scale by penalizing those paying their mortgages regularly and on time. And cutting (that's cutting ) defense spending -- hardly surprising in an administration that just a month into governance has effectively expunged the words "islamofascist" and "terror" from the lexicon.

So you don't think the stimulus and other measures will work?

Federal spending didn't work for FDR and the New Deal. It prolonged the agony. Things briefly improved, then plunged even more. Only ramping up for World War II pulled us out of the Great Depression. By the way, if Obama wants to spend, why doesn't he keep F-22 jet fighter production lines open? Why doesn't he promote nuclear energy instead of dubious alternative-energy schemes?

Further, there's this -- from Washington Post economist/columnist Robert Samuelson: "Obama and Democratic congressional leaders are using the (stimulus) legislation to advance many political priorities instead of just spurring the economy. . . . Here, partisan politics ran roughshod over pragmatic economic policy."

Anything else about Obama and Congress and the economy -- and where we are?

We're not in a good place. Obama says he will let most of the temporary Bush tax cuts expire. Despite his nods to heightened responsibility -- spending and regulation and higher taxes do not likely comprise the right way out.

Then you disagree with Newsweek's Feb. 16 cover story declaring, "We Are All Socialists Now"?

Disagree vigorously. At last check, this was neither a cradle-to-grave Scandinavian country nor a banana republic. The Newsweek declaration does apply with precision, though, to too many of those currently set in authority over us. And Obama hardly has begun to spend.

But wait. Listen closely. There, in the distance, you can hear the bugles. The federal cavalry is on its way.