Barack Obama arrived at the White House with a daunting to-do list.
He promised to save the economy from ruin, redesign the healthcare system, reregulate the financial industry, retool energy policy, slow global warming, reform education, write a new immigration law and serve as midwife to a new era of bipartisan cooperation. He said he would close the prison camp at Guantanamo, organize an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, stave off defeat in Afghanistan, negotiate with Iran, make progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace, convince the world's Muslims that America was their friend, launch a new drive toward global nuclear disarmament -- and, while he was at it, bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago.
All those goals were worthy. Some were responses to crises that couldn't be ducked. But others were electives added by the president. And the agenda quickly proved longer and more ambitious than either Congress or President Obama's executive branch could handle.
Obama turned out to be masterful at launching new policies but inconsistent at getting them to work. His presidency threatened to fall into a worrisome pattern: the announcement of a lofty goal, the delegation of implementation to second-rank officials, a missed deadline or two, last-minute intervention by the president to rescue the effort from collapse, and, finally, mixed results -- followed by a statement claiming victory.
