If you will allow me a personal moment, I will say the following: I prayed today, in my role as a supplicant before God on the first day of the Jewish New Year, not only for my family and my people and all mankind, but also for my country-which, I declare in unison with Abraham Lincoln, indeed is “the last best hope of earth.”

Besides prayer, another good move in times like these is to get outside of the Beltway.

I did that the other day, when I flew to Mississippi for the first presidential debate. America’s troubles and challenges do not look so bleak or insoluble when viewed from a place where people talk slow, the land matters, and profits depend on making or growing things, or, as at Ole Miss, on educating a hopeful new generation.

I’m thinking about all of this-about renewal, real life and new beginnings-as I consider the state of the presidential race, which I have been covering for close two years. As I do so I can see where Barack Obama is coming from-if not where he is going to.

House Minority leader John Boehner (speaking) and other House GOP leaders said Speaker Nancy Pelosi's "partisan" speech spurred defeat of the bailout bill. (Photo: Susan Walsh / AP)
 

Well, no sooner had I written a piece assuming that Hank Paulson’s Package would become law, then the U.S. House of Representatives voted “no” in a spectacular rejection of the wishes of Wall Street, the Washington establishment and the president of the United States. It was a demonstration of democracy at its finest—or worst—depending on your point of view.

Ain’t democracy grand? Infuriating, yes. Unpredictable, yes. And grand. All the Washington powers that be and all the New York money men simply could not convince the House of Representatives—"the People’s House”—to swallow the Paulson Plan.

What happened? Here are a few of the forces at work: