"Hope" is the last thing this Administration is selling.

Recent poll numbers show that only 22% of Americans think the country is on the right track.  (Rasmussen Poll).  That isn't entirely or even mostly the fault of Barack Obama.  He inherited a financial crisis (although one his party, like the Republicans, had a role in creating).  And it isn't as if the Middle East just now became a model of instability.  Even the best chief executive would have a tough time pulling a plus-50 number given many of the circumstances President Obama inherited.  So I don't want to overstate his failures and attribute every failure on earth to his Presidency the way Democrats did to President Bush.

That does not, however, excuse the President from generating the very thing that was supposed to be his singular strength -- hope.  I think most people realize that the next few years will be a struggle, but the reason they have no optimism is that this President is offering no reasonable prospect that the very real problems we have will be addressed in any serious way.  His health care system was predicated on a series of dubious assumptions and accounting gimmicks that would make Bernie Madoff proud.  And the President has been conspicuously absent from discussions about how to cut the budget.

I could even accept the argument -- even if I don't agree with it -- that now isn't the time to tackle the deficit because of the precarious nature of our economic situation.  The problem with that Keynesian argument is two-fold.  First, the President isn't making it.  He did a poor job of selling the first stimulus on Keynesian grounds because he delegated the drafting of the bill to congressional democrats, who promptly larded the bill up interest group payoffs rather than the type of real infrastructure improvements that many Americans might support.  The second problem is related to the first, in that Democrats are not actually proposing any "game changers" that Americans believe will actually affect their future.  The Administration's best attempt along these fronts is high speed rail, but no one cares because we all know that taking a train from Tampa to Orlando is a pretty useless exercise if you have to walk once you get there.  And if you don't have riders, what you have is a recurring budget expense.  Oh -- you mean people are supposed to ride the train?

Tell America that we're going to Mars.  Build the 21st Century version of the Interstate Highway System (but make sure that people will actually use it).  Or take on some massive project designed to help alleviate the water shortages in the Western part of the country.  If you're going to spend a lot of money, at least do something big to make people believe that it may offer some benefit to us, either in terms of technological advances or national prestige (Mars) or by lowering the transportation costs for future generations.

And if none of that is feasible, try coming within the Western Hemisphere of spending as much money as you take in on a yearly basis.  Otherwise, it's hard to make people believe that we aren't on our way to becoming a Banana Republic.

We don't need a bumper sticker.  We actually need H-O-P-E.