In less than a week, John McCain and Barack Obama have pulled one of the most remarkable role switches in my political memory. For months, McCain tried to frame Obama as the risky choice, the unknown quantity, the radical, while positioning himself as the reliable, experienced pragmatist. Then Obama partnered up with Joe Biden, the Clintons declared him their heir apparent, and by the time he took the stage of the Forum Obamanorum on Thursday night he was speaking to us as the personification of the Democratic mainstream. The very next morning, McCain took his huge gamble on Sarah Palin, all inexperience, attitude, and willingness to buck the establishment of her own party. Instantly, McCain was back in his long-ago maverick role, the unpredictable independent asking voters to take a big chance.

This is not going to work out well for McCain. When the country is plugging along pretty well and voters feel secure, we can be inclined to roll the dice and go for the high-flash and high-risk. But when the structure of things feels precarious, when we're worried about losing our homes and our jobs, when the world seems to be growing more dangerous, we want to play it safe with the fundamentals. Pragamatic voters are beginning to look at Obama and Biden, hearing them talk about forming large-scale plans in bipartisan consensus, and thinking, "Well, I guess they're as close to the good old Clinton days as we're going to get." While they see McCain and Palin riding out of the west, out of their odd corners of the minority party, promising shoot-'em-ups with the Russians, the Washington establishment, and the political center that Obama is now courting. Suddenly Obama has become the safer bet, and he will ride to election, if not on a tidal wave of daring aspiration, then on a long, slow swell of anxiety.