It was not easy to be cheerful when we saw headlines like: "Think 2008 was bad? Just wait, economists say" ; "Economists grim in their forecasts for 2009" ; and "2009 to be 'weakest year' since World War II." On the other hand, on the second-last day of the fateful old year we heard as well that the "Toronto stock market registered a triple-digit rise for a second straight session," and "New York indexes are also up sharply." Then again, in the midst of all the increasingly bleak economic news that finally was the unhappy hallmark of 2008, the United States actually did elect its first African American president! Bleak economic news itself holds out some hope that the latest dictatorship of the almighty dollar is waning. And this may help us remember what the English economist John Maynard Keynes prophesied in another fateful year of 1930: "I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue — that avarice is a vice ... and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who ... can teach us how to pluck the hour and the day virtuously and well ... the lilies of the field who toil not, neither do they spin."

Will Obama inevitably be a disappointment?

Some are already saying that by the end of 2009 the bloom will be off the Obama rose — or whatever the more appropriate metaphor may be. Expectations for him are so high, and the problems he faces are so challenging, that he is bound to disappoint even or perhaps especially his most passionate supporters. Even before the year had properly begun, you could arguably see the start of all this in Frank Rich’s December 27, 2008 New York Times column, "You’re Likable Enough, Gay People."

We are certainly hoping the prophets of gloom and doom here will prove untrue. Like others, we think history provides some evidence that they probably are.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt first came to office as President of the United States on March 4, 1933, at the height of the Great Depression. He never did altogether solve the economic troubles of the 1930s. That was an economic feat that only the Second World War proved able to pull off. But F.D.R. gave enough American voters enough hope to be elected president four times. (A unique political feat which ultimately prompted passage of the Twenty-second Amendment to the US Constitution in 1947, prescribing that: "No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.")

On a somewhat parallel plane, Thomas Friedman has recently urged in the New York Times that "Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard."

And Naftali Bendavid has explained in the Wall Street Journal how: "Democrats hope that voters understand the severity of this recession and don't expect them to work miracles immediately ... They take some hope in that regard from the performance of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, to whom they are increasingly looking as a role model. Mr. Roosevelt didn't rapidly end the Great Depression, but voters supported him because he seemed to care so deeply, taking aggressive action and trying everything at his disposal."

The beginning of F.D.R.’s first inaugural address, on Saturday, March 4, 1933, still has some echoes that could ring aptly enough on January 20, 2009 too: "I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."

We certainly hope not. And we’d argue that this looks less likely now than it may have looked, say six months ago.

Mr. Harper’s great strength is still that, despite his Toronto birth and upbringing, he has managed to convince a great many (even non-hard-right-wing) voters in Western Canada that he is their champion in Ottawa. His great weakness seems to be that he still has not quite figured out who he really is, or even wants to be, in Canadian politics. The result is that he is finally unsteady on his feet. (And someone in this position, you would at least think, cannot be all that hard to knock over — if those doing the knocking have their act together themselves.)

Mr. Harper also lacks the great respect for the democratically elected Parliament that was among the great virtues of Canada’s still most successful (in the sense of longest-lived) prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King (1921–1926, 1926–1930, 1935–1948). Mr. Harper is the first Canadian prime minister who has so blatantly prorogued Parliament to avoid defeat in the elected House. And here’s hoping that he will also be the last head of government to venture into such dangerous territory for Canadian democratic values.

Where will things be on this front by the end of 2009? Of course, who really knows? But stay tuned for further thoughts from one of our regular counterweights contributors, about a potential new 2009 abstaining strategy for the Liberal Party of Canada — as a kind of strategic tit for tat to Mr. Harper’s dubious 2008 prorogation ...