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(AP) -  At a harrowing national moment, Franklin D. Roosevelt
commandeered the young airwaves for a "fireside chat" with the
American people - a candid talk about big troubles and how to fix
them. He was confident and strong, a father figure to a nation that
was losing its way.

      "My friends," said Roosevelt, freshly inaugurated, "I want to
talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about
banking."

      On Tuesday night, three quarters of a century later, Barack
Obama stepped up to a less intimate but equally high-stakes version
of the national fireplace to do the same thing: talk a good game,
draw us a map back toward prosperity and "speak frankly and
directly to the men and women who sent us here."


      Many chief executives have spoken directly with the American
people since FDR's era, and an address to Congress is hardly an
intimate radio talk. No president, however, has faced a context so
similar. 

Never have the words felt so aimed at soothing Americans
who are scared, broke, rousted from their homes, uncertain about
the future of their lives and nation.


      "He speaks to people very well," said Fred Elliott, 44, owner
of a Coldwell Banker realty office in Lehigh Acres, Fla.


      Facing lawmakers and Americans by the millions, Obama traded
doomsaying for optimism and invoked an American chestnut -- the
tenacity of hope. 


"We will rebuild, we will recover. And the
United States of America will emerge stronger than before," he
said.

      But do we believe him? As in Roosevelt's time,
comforter-in-chief is only one hat of many. On Tuesday, though, it
seemed to fit.


      "He exudes a kind of self-confidence that I don't think we've
had for a long time. He kind of carries you along with it," said
Terry Swihart of Wakarusa, Ind., who has been laid off twice in the
past year - once from a job she held for 28 years. Her husband also
lost his job.


      Despite her approval, Swihart added this caveat: "I hope it's
not just rhetoric."


      That is always the fear, particularly for a president whose
eloquence was targeted in the campaign as evidence of his
disingenuousness. The words Obama chose - empathizing with
Americans while also addressing Congress - were the language of
hope but also of tough love.


      "He seemed a little more upbeat, instead of just crisis,
crisis, crisis," said Melissa Must, who runs a coffee shop in
downtown Cincinnati. 

She stayed up to watch Obama's speech even
though she rises before 5 a.m. to get to work.


      "You have to take responsibility for yourself," Must said. 

And
Americans, the president insisted, were ready. He addressed a
nation that he insisted does not shy away from challenges - it's in
our spirit - and demanded action not only from government but from
the people.


      What's more, he acknowledged that progress will not be immediate
- bad news for an instant-gratification culture but something that
Jaime Silahua, watching the speech in the San Francisco suburb of
Antioch, understood well.


      "He inherited a country with grave problems," Silahua said.
"The change is going to take some time. He'll start it, and
probably the next president will finish it."


      Silahua is on the front lines of the tanking economy. Antioch
has been hit hard by foreclosures, and housing values have dropped
by 50 percent in many neighborhoods. Silahua's house, which he
bought for $281,000 seven years ago, is now valued, he believes, at
about $89,000. He is fighting a bank eviction.


      So Obama's plan is, for him, a bit more abstract: "His
initiatives are good - they just probably won't help me at this
point."


      That is often the problem when grand national themes collide
with the building blocks of people's lives and bank accounts. 

Obama
invoked the vaunted American optimism and said that yes, another
American century was possible. But it can be a hard sell for folks
who lie awake at 2 a.m. with the stomach-churning realization that
the creditors will be calling at dawn.


      "People are really worried about a long-term shift - is the
American Dream over?" said Evan Cornog, a Columbia University
historian who studies how presidents craft their own narratives.


      Such fears are personified in Americans like Robert Lombardi,
64, who last month closed his pet store in Pennsylvania's Pocono
Mountains, where foreclosures are at record levels and no one is
buying pets. "A little soothing," Lombardi said of Obama's
speech. But ...


      "I love this country, and I hate to see it going where it's
going," he said. "It's going down the toilet. But it's a long
fight. These are just words, and now we're going to see what the
actions are."


      When FDR started his fireside chats in the depths of the
Depression, hope was a scarce commodity - even more scarce than it
is today. The new president, eight years before the U.S. entered
World War II, reassured Americans with a voice that was
"authoritative but not autocratic, persuasive but not coercive,"
FDR biographer Jonathan Alter wrote.


      That was, of course, long before Vietnam and Watergate and the
deep distrust in government that they begat. 


Jody Baugh, an
unemployed Indiana welder, offers the modern equivalent of the warm
reception that many Americans gave FDR's chats. Baugh was hungry
for hope and, he said, Obama delivered.


      "He didn't come across as a used-car salesman," Baugh said.
"He came across as someone who legitimately cared about people
like me." 

From Baugh, Obama received high marks on investing in
the middle class and holding bankers accountable for their
incompetence.


      "This is the first time I ever watched the whole speech of any
president," Baugh said. "I didn't get up at all. It gave me more
confidence. I thought, 'At least I've got somebody who is more on
my side than before.'"


      And though one-third of the nation's history separates them,
Obama and Roosevelt shared one thing above all else as they
addressed Americans about the economy at the beginning of their
presidencies. Each demanded action - not only from government but
from we, the people.


      Said Roosevelt in 1933: "It is your problem no less than it is
mine."


      Said Obama in 2009: "The time to take charge of our future is
here."


      That distinctly American message - that it's up to us, if we can
live up to our destiny - sat well with Bill Bibbes, a 68-year-old
retiree in Jackson, Miss. Bibbes lost much of his savings to the
Enron collapse, then watched lenders foreclose on his son-in-law's
house and saw his wife's 401K dwindle as Wall Street tanked.


      He thought Obama was being too ambitious with the economic
recovery plan until he watched the president address the nation.


      "My hope for the country is that we can come together," Bibbes
said. "That's what we need more than anything. Everybody has to
participate."
      

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