INDIANAPOLIS - When Sen. Barack Obama began speaking about the economy yesterday, it sounded, at first, as if ghastly news was coming.

Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, told thousands of people at a rally here that America was "at a moment of great uncertainty." He used the words "significant drop," "anxiety," "crisis" and "worse" all in his second sentence. He explained why the credit markets were frozen, described in plainspoken language how automobile plants were closing because people could not get car loans and how savings for college and retirement were "disappearing."

"Back in 1980, Ronald Reagan asked the electorate if you were better off than you were four years ago," Obama told a grandstand full of voters in the swing state of Indiana. "At the pace things are going, you’re going to have to ask if you were better off than you were four weeks ago."

Then, suddenly, a cardinal rule of politics seemed to kick in: People vote for optimists, not pessimists, even if that means obscuring hard truths in the short term.

And so Obama veered rather sharply into his version of Reaganesque confidence, taking a page from a leader who talked a great deal about sunny days but very little about the budget deficits and debt that flowed from his policies.

"I’m here, Indiana, to tell you that there are better days ahead," Obama said after his line about the grim way things were going. "I know these are tough times, and I know that many of you are anxious about the future. But this isn’t a time for fear or for panic. This is a time for resolve and steady leadership."

Unlike his opponent, Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, Obama does not brand himself as the "straight talk" candidate, but he has presented himself as a change agent with new, workable, bipartisan ideas for the economy. His remarks yesterday were only the latest, though, to reveal a disconnect between his optimistic promises and the trickier work of enacting an agenda in a polarized capital now gripped by a financial crisis.

In short, Obama continues to promise that everything will get better once he is president but does not explain how his programs and governing philosophy will adjust to new economic realities. He said yesterday that Americans needed to unite to avoid "a dark and painful recession," even though many economists say a recession has already begun and pain might be inevitable.

Obama also turned to placing blame for the economy on President George W. Bush and charging that all McCain offers are personal attacks and "more of the same Bush economics that led us into this mess the first place."

At the debate on Tuesday night, for instance, the moderator, Tom Brokaw of NBC News, asked Obama if he was telling voters "that the American economy is going to get much worse before it gets better and they ought to be prepared for that."

"No," Obama replied, "I am confident about the American economy."

That was one of the answers even his supporters at the debate judged to be indirect, as well as a moment when Obama opted to keep promising health-care reform and regulatory changes in general terms, instead of laying out specific ways that Americans would have to deal with the economy.

Chris Lehane, a Democratic strategist and an adviser to Al Gore in 2000, noted that Obama was ahead in the race right now, and he wanted to avoid doing anything that shifted the dynamic in McCain’s favor.

"I think both candidates tend to approach these forums more as if they are delivering PowerPoint presentations then pointing to people’s hearts and guts," Lehane said after the debate. "Obama played error-free ball."

Obama has been reluctant to suggest any downsizing in his ambitious legislative agenda. Yesterday, he argued that better governance of the economy, as well as an end to the $10-billion-a-month war in Iraq and billions of dollars in "cutting waste," would help turn the American financial system around and pay for his new programs.

After promising to enact universal health care and create millions of jobs in the energy sector and through public-works investments, Obama finally came to a word that politicians often invoke in recessionary times: "sacrifice."

But even here, he said sacrifice would not "be easy," only to avoid saying what the sacrifice would be or how much would be expected of people.

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