I answered this way:

Conventional wisdom would suggest that we forget politics and concentrate on the economy, that we forget morality and concentrate on practicality, that we forget a nicety like choosing our president ourselves, preferably with an honest count, and just agree to have one imposed on us for our own good.

But conventional wisdom has rarely been wise. The one president who steered America through the worst economic ordeal it ever experienced, who became its longest-serving and most beloved president, was not an economist. He was a lawyer, or at least he studied law at Harvard. He was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

When Roosevelt became president in 1932 almost all the banks were closed, 13 million Americans were unemployed, and many farmers stood to lose their farms and homes. The depth of the misery you’ll have an idea of if you read “Grapes of Wrath” or watched “Cinderella Man” or “Seabiscuit.” During his first 100 days, Roosevelt launched a program to enable business to recover and give relief to the unemployed. He called it the “New Deal.”

The rest is history. By the time the US got into the Pacific War at the end of 1941, the nightmare of hungry homeless stranded in street corners in wintry cold had become a thing of the past.

The point is simple, which has nothing to do with being an economist or lawyer. In the direst times, when in war against want or an enemy, you do not need a mechanic, you need a visionary. You do not need a mapmaker, you need a guide. You do not need someone who has a tendency to conspire, you need someone who has the capacity to inspire.

Above all you need someone you can trust. Someone who can unite the nation, rally rich and poor alike behind a vision, unleash the people’s energy toward a common goal, specifically survival. You can’t ask people to make the greatest sacrifices to battle want and hunger when they see you and your husband skimming off the fat of the land. Or trying to add another term to an already purloined one.

Now is the time to hope for someone with the credibility, the courage, and the vision, to come forth and lead this country out of the wilderness. Now is the time to hope for a leader we can trust. Better still, now is the time to look for one.

I remembered this column in light of several people asking me if I thought the calamities have complicated the electoral equation, or could complicate the electoral equation. Specifically, if they’ve made the environment the burning issue of the day, or made the most environmentally-conscious candidate the worthiest to become president.

Not at all. The calamities in fact have only served to simplify the electoral equation. The choice remains the same: The best person to deal with our situation is the one we can trust.

The problem, as I have been harping on this past couple of weeks, is not just the state of calamity the storms have wrought upon this country, it is the state of calamity a whole bunch of things—and people—have wrought upon this country. That includes global recession, global warming (of which the superstorms are inescapable proof), global scarcities particularly of oil and food, and local snakes on the plane, or in Malacañang.

Our situation today in fact is a Great Depression, in more ways than was ever contemplated by that phrase, in more ways than Roosevelt had to deal with. It is a Great Depression brought on by the fury of ill-tempered Nature and the even greater fury of ill-tempered (wo)men, that combines the recession of production with the recession of morals, that combines the multiplication of depressed communities with the deepening of depressed mentalities, also called hopelessness and despair.

That is not just solved by relief work. That is not just solved by fortifying dams. That is not just solved even by making the country more environmentally conscious. Even if all of the above would go a long way to make things better, or help us survive. That is solved by moving heaven and earth or rallying the people to come together to act to avert the danger, and having done that, build anew. That is done by giving the people an even break, that is done by giving the people a stake in their country, that is done by giving the people a new deal.

Who best to do that?

Last year, in August, Rudy Giuliani was here to talk about how New York got back on its feet after 9/11, no small thanks to him. His talk, which cost P300,000 per table of 12, bears on this as well. How to deal with crisis of herculean proportions?

“People are in great need of honesty and integrity in government. It is the only way you can overcome the cynicism that is developing among the people. The more they can see how government operates, the more they feel that government is operating in the open, the more confidence a government can develop. Probably the best advice you can give any government today is to be more transparent.”

Maybe the people who bought seats to the affair thought the privilege of hearing it from Giuliani was worth P300,000. But the rest of us, for whom that is a year’s worth of salary, may console ourselves with just looking at history, and seeing what people like Franklin Delano Roosevelt have done. Quite simply, the one leader you need in times of Great Unraveling is the one person who is honest.

The one person you can trust.