While W. and Dick conjured an alternative reality about Iraq, our avaricious bankers created an alternative reality about our financial system. Now our busted trust is not so easily fixed.

Image Maureen Dowd Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

In an Associated Press article headlined “Obama Plans Eclipsing New Deal Spending,” the Rutgers University political science professor Ross Baker notes, “Not surprisingly, people are wary of some very expensive proposals with no guarantee of success or even a high probability of how well they’ll work.”

In The Times, Eric Dash reported that Wall Street is losing confidence in Washington’s vague and shifting plans, sending shares of bank companies plunging to new lows on Friday.

President Obama disdains sound bites, and he does not have Bill Clinton’s talent for reducing the abstruse to aperçus. We wanted someone smart to gather a bunch of smart people around him to get us out of this fix. But Mr. Obama’s egghead manner has failed to soothe a nation with the jits. Maybe he has been so intent on avoiding the stereotype of the Angry Black Man, as he wrote in his memoir, that it’s hard for him to connect with and articulate public anger about our diminishment.

Though he demonstrated in the campaign that he has a rare gift for inspiring the country with new belief in itself, Mr. Obama has not yet captured either the grit the moment requires or the fury it provokes. He has not explained in a compelling way why Americans who followed the rules need to sacrifice more to help those who flouted the rules.

That is why the CNBC reporter Rick Santelli struck a populist nerve with his screed about the unfairness of responsible homeowners picking up the tab for irresponsible homeowners  following the unfairness of taxpayers who are losing jobs, homes and savings propping up the exact same bankers and carmakers whose greed and myopia caused the economy to crash.