Obama seems a bit grave to me these days. The death of his grandmother has edged his public mood with sadness, but this heaviness preceded it. Compare the closing-days portraits of the two candidates in the Times: I’d rather spend the final stretch in the company of the Republican. McCain is ironic, gregarious, plucky; Obama is fully hidden away within himself. He is, we already knew, an aloof, perhaps unknowable man—you feel it even after hearing his life story told in his own remarkable voice over the several hundred pages of “Dreams from My Father.” But his manner before crowds and his face in photographs seem even farther out of reach than usual.

The reason came to me when I was reading the galleys of H. W. Brands’s new biography of F.D.R., “Traitor to His Class.” On the night of his landslide victory over Hoover, in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Roosevelt had an intimate conversation with his son James:

“You know, Jimmy,” Franklin said, “all my life I have been afraid of only one thing—fire. Tonight I think I’m afraid of something else.”

“Afraid of what, Pa?”

“I’m just afraid that I may not have the strength to do this job.” He paused reflectively. “After you leave me tonight, Jimmy, I am going to pray. I am going to pray that God will help me, that he will give me the strength and the guidance to do this job and to do it right. I hope that you will pray for me, too, Jimmy.”

(Photograph courtesy Flickr: Obama in Cleveland, November 2nd, 2008)