How can we reduce risk for individuals? That's a natural question when a financial crisis has vaporized trillions of dollars of personal wealth in residential real estate and financial instruments.

We Americans are blessed with a history that teaches that things work out right. Our first president set the precedent of relinquishing power he could have had for life and returning to his farm. Two of our greatest presidents were struck down, Abraham Lincoln by an assassin and Franklin Roosevelt by grave illness, at a moment of transcendent victory.

Barack Obama has noted, carefully and correctly, that we have only one president at a time. Yet on at least one issue he has taken the lead and nudged the man who will soon be his predecessor in a direction that he might not have taken without prompting.

The Democrats' victory -- and Barack Obama's -- was overdetermined and underdelivered.

With victory in sight, Barack Obama's supporters are predicting that he will give us a new New Deal. To see what that might mean, let's look back on the original New Deal.

What will an Obama administration and a Congress with increased Democratic majorities do? That's a relevant question, given the Democrats' leads in the polls. And it's a little hard to answer, given the financial crisis that has been raging and the recession that seems to be ahead.

Can Joe Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber from Ohio, change the course of this campaign? That’s one question that was raised at the third presidential debate.

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors," Barack Obama told a crowd in Elko, Nev. "I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face." Actually, Obama supporters are doing a lot more than getting into people's faces. They seem determined to shut people up.

Politics ordinarily has a certain predictability. Yet presidential politics this year has often seemed to resemble what science writer James Gleick described in his book "Chaos."

You can sum up much of 20th century history by saying that in the 1930s Americans decided that markets didn't work and government did, and that in the 1970s Americans decided that government didn't work and markets did.