The Inn Between’s waitress is busy delivering the lunch special of breaded chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans to a stream of customers who work at different places but all seem to know one another.

The banter is raucous and sustained, and when the conversation turns to a proposed federal bailout for U.S. automakers, there is little support for the idea.

“I don’t think they should bail them out because … obviously something’s not right in the way they’re running their business, and why should the American people have to bail them out if they can’t figure out how to do it right?” September Quinn, the busy waitress, said after the lunch rush at the Inn Between.

No, the problem is that she is not a well-qualified candidate. She is not by any stretch of the imagination a foreign-policy expert. I don’t think I would call her a born diplomat. And her loyalties, to put it mildly, might be divided. Her first priority would be to advance her own presidential ambitions, not to help make the Obama presidency such a success that those hopes die. The “team of rivals” idea is wonderful so long as the rivals are fully invested in the success of the enterprise. In this case, it seems doubtful. Could Hillary defer to Obama, and carry out his instructions to the best of her ability? I doubt it. And it would not help that everyone would be watching for the first sign of friction or insubordination. The soap-opera dimension would be highly counter-productive.

I find Tom Friedman persuasive on this:

Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president. And when they think they are talking to the president, they sit up straight; and when they think they are talking only to the secretary of state, they slouch in their chairs. When they think they are talking to the president’s “special envoy,” they doze off in midconversation.

What is Obama thinking, I wonder? That the party would be delighted? Yes it would, but so what: the election is already won. Or is it something to do with keeping your friends close and your enemies closer? (LBJ put it less delicately of course, but the metaphor does not really work in this instance.)

In fairness to Collier, it is very difficult to demonstrate causal effects with the kind of data we have available to us on civil wars and failing states. As Collier writes, “our model cannot be used for prediction.” In the research papers on which his book is based, Collier does give abundant caveats that show he understands the limits of correlations for inferring that actions cause outcomes. But the caveats are not as apparent in the book, and Collier does not explain to the reader just why he recommends precise actions so confidently on the basis of mere correlations.

Of course, governments take many actions even when social scientists are unable to establish that such actions will cause certain desirable outcomes. Presumably they use some kind of political judgment that is not based on statistical analysis. What is unusual about Collier’s book is that he seems to offer statistical analysis as a replacement for political judgment, or perhaps unintentionally gives scholarly cover for actions that governments want to take anyway. The press shows a certain reverence for social science work with statistics that can make this cover quite effective. The paradox is that many social scientists familiar with this kind of analysis do not share the press’s reverence.

One of the fears expressed about the weekend Group of 20 summit in Washington was that expectations might soar too high. All the talk of a new Bretton Woods was worrying, many observers reckoned. It would most likely come to nothing and, when it did, that would be another setback to confidence.

The fears were a little overstated – not because the summit achieved much but because, in the US at least, this climactic moment came and went without anyone really noticing.

You might have thought that an emergency gathering of leaders from the world’s 20 main rich and emerging economies, with the global economy poised for its worst slump since the Great Depression, would have aroused some interest. The event was deemed unworthy of the main section of Saturday’s New York Times. (Room was found on the front page for a story about how hard it is to open the “clamshell” packaging of toys and electronic gadgets. The summit, “A crisis in finance”, made page 3 of the business section.) On television news, world leaders’ efforts to stave off disaster were displaced by speculation about Hillary Clinton’s next job and by fires in California (four firemen injured).

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

Only then, staring oblivion in the face, did the slow stirrings of recovery begin. A senior Conservative official, Theresa May, had already warned that the Tories had to shed their image as “the nasty party” with few women or members of ethnic minorities in Parliament. Now, at last, that message began to be heard. A younger, fresher face emerged and overtook more established rivals for the leadership: David Cameron.

Mr. Cameron’s candidacy was built on a simple premise: modernize or die. He told the Tories they had to look as if they actually liked the country they sought to govern, rather than wishing they could turn back time. They could not hope to form a winning coalition without appealing to the Britons whom Mr. Blair had made his own: women, suburbanites, the highly educated. Relying on angry old white men was never going to get the Conservatives much beyond 33 percent.

To that end, Mr. Cameron set about decontaminating the Tory brand. Central to that mission were forays into two areas of political terrain previously deemed forbidden zones. First, he signaled comfort with gay rights, ditching the party’s previous support for laws restricting sexual equality. Second, he championed environmentalism. He may have endured news media mockery when he took a dogsled ride to inspect a Norwegian glacier in 2006, but it did the trick, confirming that the Tories were changing.

Mr. Cameron’s efforts have paid off: recent polls suggest a Conservative victory at the next election. Of course, the lessons of one society can never fully apply to another. But the Tory experience suggests that a defeated party of the right has to move toward the center, abandon divisive social issues and elect a leader who looks as if he or she actually belongs in the 21st century. With Arnold Schwarzenegger ineligible for the presidency and no other accommodating figure on the horizon, the Republicans might have a bumpy decade ahead.

The Tory revival surely owes more to exhaustion with “New Labour” than to Cameron’s rebranding, but Freedland is right that the Tories had to embrace moderation and centrism to become electable again. (The same was true of Labour, of course. After Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979, they were out of power for 18 years, choosing leaders true to the soul of the party, with far too little appeal to the centre. Then came Blair.)

Shame about Schwarzenegger.

True, doubts surround the details of China’s proposal. It’s unclear how much of what they are proposing is really additional to existing plans. And of course the timing was not determined entirely by the approaching summit. Figures about to be released are expected to show a sharp deceleration in Chinese growth; announcing a big stimulus in anticipation of this makes sense domestically. Nonetheless, the new initiative–described by Chinese officials as “massive”–sure gives President Hu Jintao something talk about when he meets George Bush later this week. Up to now, the US and the West have been urging China to do more to help stabilise the world economy. Suddenly, China is setting the pace and it is the US and Europe that are dragging their feet. A sign of things to come?

While giving that some thought, here is some useful prep on the summit. Morris Goldstein at the Peterson Institute for International Economics reiterates his “ten-plus-ten” plan with characteristic force and clarity. And in a remarkable feat of timeliness, VoxEU publishes a collection of short and (putting China’s announcement to one side) bang up-to-date essays in an electronic volume edited by Barry Eichengreen and Richard Baldwin, “What G20 leaders must do to stabilise the economy and fix the financial system”. It includes fast accessible pieces by many of the best international-economics and finance scholars in the world, including Willem Buiter, Raghuram Rajan, Dani Rodrik, Michael Spence and others. By the way, my spirits lifted to see Dani, who is usually inclined to pick holes in the orthodox case for open markets on the grounds that it is all so complicated, propose these refreshingly simple-minded phrases for inclusion in the final communique:

The weeks and months ahead will be trying times for economic policymakers everywhere, as they try to contain the fallout for output and employment. Raising trade barriers against imports will be a temptation, especially when currencies fluctuate so much. But the experience with the Great Depression teaches us that this is the surest way to magnify the costs of the crisis, and to spread it to other countries. Hence the most serious challenge for the global trading regime at the present is to ensure that the financial and economic crisis does not lead to a vicious cycle of protectionism, greatly exacerbating the economic downturn.

So we jointly commit ourselves in public to not raising protectionist barriers in response to perceived threats to employment from imports. We further ask the secretariat of the World Trade Organisation to monitor and report unilateral changes in trade policy, with the purpose of “naming and shaming” G20 members that depart from this commitment.

During the US presidential campaigning, neither candidate was about to let the financial crisis dictate a wholesale remake of his economic platform. As the markets crashed and the recession rolled in, every promise stood, however ancient its provenance, as though nothing had changed and dealing with the crisis was a separate issue. It took Barack Obama three days – from the election result to his first press conference – to think again.

At said conference, the president-elect declined to confirm that he would raise top tax rates soon. Is he wondering if John McCain, his Republican opponent, was right, and this is no time to be raising anybody’s taxes? Mr Obama also said that his promised tax cuts for “95 per cent of working families” should be seen as part of a new fiscal stimulus. Previously, he had not mentioned this as a reason for cutting taxes. On the contrary, he had emphasised that his plan was roughly revenue neutral, implying that any stimulus would be second order.

A question too complicated for campaign speeches, and which neither side even wanted to think about, now needs an answer. How can the next administration reconcile its longer-term goals for the economy with the imperatives of the economic crisis? Getting this right will not be easy, but is the key to success or failure in Mr Obama’s presidency.

The remainder of the article can be read here. Please post comments below.

The economy promptly tanked. In the end it was revived not by the New Deal but by the war FDR had promised to stay out of. He won two more presidential elections.

The similarities between 1932 and 2008 make the temptation to draw parallels impossible to resist. One lesson that might give the president-elect comfort is that voters can overlook a lot of failure if they are sure that a president is on their side. Persuading them of this was FDR’s surpassing talent. Mr Obama may have the same knack.

The history of the Great Depression is obscured by partisan mythology. One must steer a middle course between regarding FDR as a kind of saint who delivered the US from economic collapse and global conflict, and a malicious bungler who trashed the constitution and prolonged the Depression. Perhaps it is a moot point whether Mr Obama should even wish to be another FDR. If the thought should cross his mind, though, here are some things to consider.

After a prolonged and deliberately stalled transition – he and Herbert Hoover could not work together – FDR started with a bang. He dealt decisively with the financial aspect of the economic crisis. He closed the banks and used the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to recapitalise those sound enough to reopen. Most promptly did reopen and confidence in banks revived. He also took the dollar off the gold standard and let it depreciate. These were abrupt departures from Hoover’s policies and they worked.

Then it was mostly a case of one step forward, two steps back. In his first 100 days FDR passed a blizzard of new laws – a standard other presidents seem expected to meet, though why is unclear. Banking and finance aside, the first months of the New Deal were a muddle.

Public works created new employment. But the Agricultural Adjustment Act aimed to support farm incomes through price and production controls; its fingerprints are on today’s wasteful farm policies. Then came the National Recovery Administration to oversee a complex web of industrial regulation. This was based on the idea that too much production (not too little demand) was prolonging the slump. The NRA slowed the recovery. When the Supreme Court shut it down in 1935, growth picked up.

FDR persisted with taxes and other measures aimed at “economic royalists” – big business and the rich. Most likely, these also did more harm than good. Of greatest lasting significance, however, he laid the foundations of the welfare state in the Social Security Act of 1935. This did less than it might have to hasten recovery. New social security taxes began to be collected in 1936; benefits were not to be paid until a fund had been built up. (FDR was no Keynesian.) Nonetheless, the act created a programme that Americans today regard as inviolable.

FDR changed the country by changing what citizens demand of government. Economic hardship was no longer a private problem. It was the government’s responsibility to provide some measure of economic security. Deploying a modern mastery of public relations, Roosevelt embraced this responsibility; and though the results were not always good, he did his best to discharge it. The country loved him for this.

Is Mr Obama an FDR for the new century? A president has many ways of ruining his reputation, and this is a different world, yet the idea looks plausible. Like Roosevelt, Mr Obama inherits a crisis not of his making. Like Roosevelt, he is brimming with energy to get things done. Like Roosevelt – happy days are here again – he has given the country a jolt of optimism just by turning up. FDR understood that his greatest strength was not being Hoover; he emphasised (and exaggerated) the differences. Mr Obama gets it and does not have to try so hard. Could he be more different from George W. Bush?

Some of Roosevelt’s paths to reverence are closed. The transition is likely to be co-operative. The outgoing administration has already acted boldly to stabilise the financial system. Mr Obama will build on that – much as FDR’s jobs programmes expanded and rebranded some of Hoover’s. In managing the immediate crisis, he will find it difficult to make a decisive break. As for attitudes to government, a change as great as the one FDR made can happen only once.

Like FDR, on the other hand, Mr Obama accepts the duty to provide economic security more eagerly than his predecessor did, at a time when that promise, however difficult it may be to keep, has great new appeal. He has a signature policy as well – healthcare reform – that gives that obligation concrete form and could do for his place in history what social security did for Roosevelt’s.

Above all, like FDR, Mr Obama is a great persuader. When it comes to making voters believe he is on their side, he is to Mr Bush as Roosevelt was to Hoover. An early economic recovery would be good, but FDR showed that some things matter more.

What happens when an irresistible politician meets an immovable political or economic reality? Is a superb campaigner equipped to be a good president in testing circumstances?

Or is it rather as Bob Dylan put it: “The louder they come, the harder they crack?”

Mr Obama’s stunning political talents are indeed great assets, more so in the US system than they would be elsewhere. His mastery of the campaigning art has two aspects – and both should be as valuable in office as they were in winning it.

One is his personal magnetism. He is an instantly likeable man; a fine orator yet no demagogue; an intellectual but not inclined to show off about it; a calm and calming presence. The other is that, on the evidence of this campaign, he is an exceptionally cool and competent manager. No Drama Obama, they call him.

Compare the discipline and single-mindedness of Mr Obama’s campaign with the shambles of John McCain’s. Compare its steady consistency of tone and message with the squabbling, indecisive, misdirected efforts of Hillary Clinton and her team.

If you ask why George W. Bush was such a bad president, it is partly because he scores so poorly as a leader and as a manager. Most Americans found him a likeable man, to be sure, but none would accuse him of being an inspiring speaker, or even always an intelligible one.

At times a country needs its spirits lifted, or its nerves steadied. Mr Bush spoke well for the nation after the terror attacks of 9/11, but subsequently failed to rise to this challenge. His faltering, glassy-eyed pep-talks of recent weeks, with the financial system breaking down and the economy falling into recession, alarmed more people than they reassured.

As for Mr Bush’s management skills, one need only think of the war in Iraq or the administration’s lamentable handling of Hurricane Katrina.

An indispensable talent in a president is the ability to delegate well – to appoint good people (a president can choose from the best) and get the soundest advice.

To a pathological degree, Mr Bush has valued political loyalty over competence. Whatever one thinks of his goals, the results speak for themselves. Mr Obama’s choice of advisers is impeccable, and not drawn from a narrow circle of friends and allies. He demands to be exposed to counter-arguments; he is not always looking to have his own prejudices shored up.

Admirable as these traits may be, Mr Obama is untested in high office. Governing is not campaigning. An audience can be charmed by a well-turned phrase and a winning manner. Facts on the ground are less susceptible, and starting with the economy Mr Obama has to deal with some especially bloody-minded instances.

He promised in his victory speech: “I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.” Maybe in future he will be, but his economic platform – promising lower taxes for almost everyone and greatly expanded public programmes too – was hardly forthright.

He may in the end be a victim of his own talent. He set out to raise expectations and he did: they are impossibly high.

His ability to manage disappointment is so far untested. That is about to change.