Obama's Reform Agenda: Is He Trying to Do Too Much?

And Team Obama isn't there yet. Even for a great communicator, confidence requires an investment in credibility — and Obama has been a little risky with his portfolio. He said no lobbyists would be working in his White House — except the ones he really, really needed — and that no pork would fatten his budgets once he got past the $410 billion omnibus spending bill with its 8,570 earmarks. By promising higher standards for hiring, tighter controls on spending and greater transparency in execution, Obama set himself up to let people down. Consider Orszag's March 10 trip to Capitol Hill to testify before the Senate Finance Committee. Senators are intrigued by Obama's proposed 10-year, $634 billion "down payment" on health-care reform, but Orszag pointedly avoided going into detail. "You will not be receiving definitive answers from me on exactly what the Administration does or does not favor on the benefits-and-coverage side of health reform," he told the panel. This may be a good way to get a bill through Congress; whether it is a good way to instill broader confidence in the President's priorities is another question.

How Long Will Americans Wait?
Americans under stress are more receptive to the robust government that Democrats offer. So Obama believes conditions are ripe for his party's answers to problems that are far beyond the present storm. Inside the Administration, Obama's audacious budget sketch is seen as an intricate web of reinforcing reforms, an exquisite piece of re-engineering in which stimulus creates jobs, jobs generate revenues, revenues fund an efficient health-care system, which in turn tames the deficit. What critics consider a massive intervention to impose a price on carbon emissions is, to the White House, the engine for the growth of a robust new green economy. Meanwhile, students will begin graduating from improved schools and moving seamlessly into this prosperous future. Shortcomings may lie in the details, but the economy won't really be fixed until the entire web is assembled. "I see this document differently," Obama told Congress as he introduced the budget. "I see it as a vision for America — as a blueprint for our future."

This is the reason behind the Obama team's madcap multitasking. As press secretary Robert Gibbs put it the other day, the whole American house is on fire, not just the particular room where the flames happen to be roaring. "Are you going to call the fire department and ask them to put all of it out?" Gibbs asked. "Or are you going to say, 'You know what? We love the living room. Start over there. And if you can, get quickly to the kitchen, and next to the den.' We could do that. And maybe by the time they get to the kitchen or the den, the whole house is in ashes."

But moderate Democrats in Congress may douse some of Obama's grander ambitions. As infuriating as that is to progressives eager to seize on this "good crisis," it's a natural by-product of giving the vote to Americans who live in coal-burning, oil-drilling, far-driving and heavy-manufacturing regions. One such place is Indiana, whose Democratic Senator, Evan Bayh, will be tough to sell every line of the Obama budget to. "I've spent some time with the President, and my strong impression of him is, at the end of the day, he's a pragmatist," Bayh says. Translation: Obama will take what he can get.

The thing nostalgic Democrats forget about Social Security is that it did not come in the first year of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency or even in the second. The major initiatives of the New Deal passed only after F.D.R. had convinced Americans that he had his priorities straight. His immediate attention to issues like the run on banks and sky-high unemployment gave him a congressional landslide in 1934 that ratified his 1932 victory. That's when he grew strong enough to pass his broader agenda. The best way not to "waste a good crisis" is to put the stress on "crisis." Once Obama does that, the antsy gang on Wall Street and in Washington will have to pay attention.

— With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, Michael Duffy and Jay Newton-Small

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