The "change" president, finally, might actually change something.

"It's a fight I'm ready to have," Barack Obama says on TV in taking a stand against the decade-old racket that lets commercial banks take customer money and go a-gaming with it. This of course is the politically astute thing to say in these troubled times. But the White House stagecraft this week adds gravitas to the rhetoric by bringing Paul Volcker in from the cold and standing him up in Obama's corner. Volcker's the guy who's been going around shouting into the wilderness that Glass-Steagall must be revived. Suddenly, the idea has wind in its sails.