I DON’T typically look to the President of the United States for hope. And if I did, Supreme-Court-attended, overzealously applauded addresses to Congress—usually the platform for wispy laundry lists of last imaginary future policy—are hardly the place I would expect to find it. But right now, I’m as tired as anyone of the relentless barrage of economic hysteria, and wouldn’t mind hearing a little reassurance from the man who used the word “hope” more times in the past year than anyone has in the rest of American history combined. Tonight, it was his battle to lose; we were ready to hear it. Could anything Barack Obama might say in fifty-five minutes make me—or anyone else in this cynical, politician-distrusting country—actually hope?

The overlong introductions—first members of Congress, then Michelle, then cabinet, then Supreme Court, all followed by applause and chatter—were an odd mixture of formality and Mardi Gras. Much like his convention speech last July, Obama had to thank the audience upwards of ten times before they finally broke their applause (only to have Nancy Pelosi re-announce him, starting it all over again). Strong statements came rapid-fire off the top: “While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken, though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before.” His voice was loud and forceful. He meant it.

What wasn’t clear, an hour later, was what exactly—and how exactly—President Obama plans to bring that to pass. Of course, he’s right; the United States always has crawled out of its financial holes, and it will most certainly do so this time. And his heart’s in the right place: he gets us, and knows exactly what to say. He pushed for the stimulus “not because I believe in bigger government—I don’t. Not because I’m not mindful of the massive debt we’ve inherited—I am.” Those are the words we need to hear, but they’re also the words we need someone to act on. The deficit Obama “inherited” multiplied dramatically in one flash of his pen. Democrats, who spent the past few weeks loading the bill with billions of dollars for the likes of polar ice-breaking ships, leapt to their feet at the insinuation that all the wild overspending was Bush’s fault.

It’s certainly a breath of fresh air—almost exciting, even—to have a president who communicates so well, a man people will happily spend an hour watching on television. He’s so good at it, so likeable that it almost makes one want to believe. He can get down on a level where he's completely believable when encouraging all Americans to commit to a year of higher education in preparation for the new ideas economy. Throughout the night, he reinforced the perception that he wants to be a non-partisan president, one who cares above all that the problem gets solved no matter how or who’s upset about it. He downplayed talk of government growth, soft-pedaled his usual anti-corporate rhetoric, and displayed a palpable concern about the deficit. Where anti-Iraq screeds once erupted, measured talk of “ending the war responsibly” now made a stately appearance. Our problems, he seemed to say, reprising his cool campaign performances, are all fixable if enough people want it badly enough to work together.

The president spoke of oversight and efficiency, of Vice President Joe Biden’s new watchdog position (“nobody messes with Joe”), of the now-functioning recovery.org. It’s not hard to believe that he means what he says, but the realities of Washington, painfully illustrated over the past month, set his ambitions in sharp relief. “A failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years,” he said. “And that’s why I pushed for quick action.” No mention of the reality that a failure to act well, as in the case of the Frankenstein monster stimulus, isn’t much better than failing to act period. Few things in governance are as dangerous as a bipartisan commitment to act hastily. Pushing to get a bill through Congress—some bill, any bill, even a shamelessly wasteful bill—hardly exhibit the kind of rigorous transparency he is promising.

For the most part, Obama’s non-State of the Union address behaved just like a regular State of the Union address: encouraging in tone, with panoramic pandering to protectionism (“keeping American jobs”), environmentalism (“save our planet from the ravages of climate change”), and, bizarrely, Detroit (“the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it”). One promise in particular captured the night’s high-flying, practicality-free atmosphere: “[The stimulus] will launch a new effort to conquer a disease that has touched the life of nearly every American, including me, by seeking a cure for cancer in our time.” It's certain to be described in the press today, as the contents of these addresses always are, as an "ambitious agenda."

If this president gives us any reason to hope, it’s in him as a leader—that he’s a good man who cares deeply and urgently about solving the problems we all face together. After hearing him tonight, I don’t think any American doubts his willingness to approach our conflicts as dispassionately and pragmatically as a politician can. But as for giving us reason to hope in Washington, or in government itself … well, sometimes the cynical position is the correct one. We’ll believe it when we see it.