Mr. Obama was not X's first choice, and X is not the kind of person to change her mind on a whim, or stop on a dime.  She reminds me of this with a skeptical tone of voice whenever and wherever Mr. Obama is concerned.

"I hear," she says to me yesterday, "that Obama's copying FDR.  You know, Roosevelt and that whole Public Works Project thing of his?  Obama's just copying."

"Oh?" I reply timidly.

"I just hope," she continues in that optimistic-less way of hers that lets you know she's not exactly holding her breath with this hoping, "I just hope someone tells him he's gonna have to do more than FDR did if he really thinks he's going to deal with this situation we got on our hands nowadays.  As oppposed to 1929.  I mean, I think what we got is a little bit worse than anything they were dealing with back in the old days, if you know what I mean.  Like that hedge fund guy?  I mean, hello?  Did they even have fifty billion dollars to lose back in 1929?  I don't think so."  

The sarcasm regarding the President-Elect's plan for economic recovery is not understated; X proceeds to conjure a vision of woefully inadequate preparation, with solutions pathetically out-of-date and doomed to failure, as if Mr. Obama was about to lead a small half-naked band of spear-carrying natives against the entire assembled forces of the United Federation of Planets under Star Fleet Command.  

"I mean," she adds, "The unemployment rate didn't go down all that much under Roosevelt.  I hope Mr. Obama realizes that.  I hope he's got someone around to point that out to him.  Right up to World War Two, unemployment didn't go down all that much.  Most people think Roosevelt ended the Depression.  Well, I've got news for them.   Roosevelt did not end the Depression."

I am tempted at this point to blurt out that maybe the War had something to do with altering the economic situation at the time, but since I'm pretty sure that's not her point and she's uninterested in promoting another war as an economic fix, I resist interrrupting.

"And did you know," she asks, when I don't respond, "that those Fireside Chats of Roosevelt's to the American People -- they weren't every day, did you realize that?  I did not know that.  They were not even weekly.  There were only like 36 of them.  In what, two terms in office?  That's not exactly what I'd call chatting with the people, would you?  Not in my book it's not."

"Really," I say, to be supportive and non-committal at the same time, because you don't argue with X.  You listen.   X makes a snorting sound, as if to imply that at this point anything further coming from the Roosevelt administration (and by extension, the future Obama White House) is clearly suspect and should be thrown out as evidence, especially now that the whole Fireside Chat business has been exposed as basically nothing more than smoke and mirrors.  Case dismissed.

Mr. Obama will have his hands full as far as X is concerned, I can tell you that much.  She will be one tough cookie.  He will have his work cut out for him if he thinks he's ever going to impress her.  He may not like hearing this, but I predict an uphill battle for him, on many fronts.  And let's face it, to X, one thing is quite certain: he's no Hillary.

You, however, might be interested in knowing that Arthur F. Burns, the noted economist and Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978, was born in 1904.   

Just in case you thought I was kidding the other day about 1904's impact on the economics of our day.   I'm just saying.