The panic on Wall Street and in the financial markets has reversed this year's fickle political trends once again, strongly and perhaps decisively in favor of Barack Obama. Sinking in the polls three weeks ago, Senator Obama's leading supporters fretted that their favorite's campaign magic may have faded, but Obama's polling figures have surged since the financial crisis broke and in turn caused panic among Republicans. All of this is in line with well-established patterns in American political history, which should encourage Democrats about their chances of winning the White House in November. But in other respects, the panics of the past offer the Democrats a more daunting and looming challenge—one Obama has yet to meet.

To close the deal, Obama will need to promote, as the Roosevelts did, a plan of action, which might well include federal investigations of possible criminal wrongdoing.

The recent turnabout is, ironically, a bit awkward for some of Obama's backers in the political press. Back before the financial crisis hit, when Obama was slipping, pro-Obama pundits blamed his underachieving in the polls on white racism, pure and simple. The supposedly tried-and-true explanation that Democrats lose because the heartland's voters are hoodwinked and sheepish had long since given way to an all-purpose explanation for Obama's electoral failures—covert, sneaky, but devastating bigotry about the color of Obama's skin. One commentator, Jacob Weisberg, of Slate.com, went so far as to state flatly that if Obama lost, it would be solely because of Americans' crazy irrationality over race. Has the financial crisis caused all of that stubborn crazy Americans bigotry suddenly to evaporate? Have those whom self-styled progressives disparage as the racist Reagan Democrats-turned-Clinton Democrats suddenly snapped to their senses (even though, historically, hard times and economic anxieties often worsen racial and other social animosities rather than curb them)? Or have the more fervent Obama supporters allowed their own class prejudices to misjudge the voters of, say, Michigan, where McCain's campaign has just abandoned ship? Might class, and concerns related to class, now trump race in American politics, or at least for the moment?

The answer to that final question appears to lie chiefly with Senator Obama himself, and not the voters. For the political outcomes of financial panics depends largely on political leadership—not just in winning election but in actually governing effectively thereafter. And the historical record on these outcomes is decidedly mixed. In 1837 and 1857, incumbent Democratic presidents Martin Van Buren and James Buchanan proved unable to recognize, let alone address, the underlying causes of the nation's financial and economic woes. As a result, Van Buren lost to pro-bank Whigs; and Buchanan's Democrats lost a vital economic issue to the infant Republican Party, which deftly exploited it in key swing states, above all Pennsylvania, in 1860.

By contrast, the two Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin, talked and acted decisively in the face of financial disaster. In particular, F.D.R.—sometimes wrongly portrayed by historians as a balanced-budget conservative in 1932—not only called for a New Deal for the American people but also backed it up with specific proposals that he effectively explained would counteract Hoover's. It was not enough, Roosevelt knew, to blame Hoover and past Republican policies; instead he proposed cures ranging from unemployment assistance to pro-labor laws, and explained how they would aid not just the down-and-out but the entire nation. Then, as president, he followed thorough, pragmatically but resolutely.

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