Here again Obama's oxymoronic quality is on display. As with the business community, Obama's assurances to the pro-Israel community mean little. His precise words are discounted. As with the business community, rumor or anecdote trumps pronouncements or actions -- something Obama once said, a pro-Palestinian friend he once had. Something like that. The whisper has more volume than the speech itself. It is an odd state of affairs.

It's highly unlikely that Obama's Middle East policy, perceived or actual, will cost him re-election. The economy, though, is a different matter. Here, Obama is out of options. Unemployment is up a tick, housing is down plenty of ticks and manufacturing is out of breath. The sane policy remedy would be to pour on the stimulus, adding jobs -- even government jobs -- to offset those that have been lost. The insane policy would be to ignore the signal lesson of the Great Depression -- when Franklin Roosevelt, listening to the John Boehners of his day, cut spending to reduce the deficit. The Depression deepened.

There will be no stimulus. The Republicans will see to that. The Fed cannot lower interest rates further. They're about at zero. The option left for Obama is to reassure the business community that he is on their side, that he is counting on them to produce jobs and that they, feeling optimistic, will spend the $1.9 trillion in cash they have stuffed into their corporate mattresses. These executives are not fools. They are reacting to a perceived reality.

In essence, Obama needs to lead. He needs to show those qualities that made Ronald Reagan and FDR such formidable politicians. They both served in economically perilous times -- Roosevelt much more so than Reagan -- and had an internal and external consistency that Obama so far has lacked. Their essential quality was buoyant optimism -- a Happy Warrior (the term FDR used for Al Smith) and a Morning-Again-in-America guy. Their critics called them many things, but never dour, and never oxymoronic.