Three weeks is a a long time to take off for a blogger, and so I apologize--to myself as well as to anyone else accustomed to reading this space. But I needed a vacation.  My wife and I went to France, Switzerland (briefly) and Bulgaria. There was work of a sort interspersed in the trip, but mainly it was a vacation, our first in almost three years. While in France we were not only in Paris but also Haute Savoie.  Or what in English used to be called Savoy. Savoy was an independent polity for longer than the United States has been organized territorially, from around 1516 to 1860. But unless you know a little European history, this will come as news to most Americans. One sees signs here and there while driving around the mountains (these are the French Alps, of course) that read "Savoie libre."  The white-on-red Savoy cross is everywhere, too. Ah, European regionalism raising its head under the high blue sky of the European Union umbrella. A phenomenon with a future--noting Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland and many other examples? I think so. 

But that has nothing to do with Barack Obama. So let me only say that I will write more about my trip later, particularly about my first time in Bulgaria. For now, however, just a short comment about the President. 

Last thing I heard the President say was that he "can't just push a button and have the banks do what he wants them to do", or "flip a switch" and make Congress obey his desires. Of course, the President-as-pedagogue explains to the American people, there are counterpoised centers of power in the United States. The President is not a king or a dictator.  All of this is true, certainly, but that is not the point I wish to make. The point I wish to make coalesces around a question: It is wise to say things that are true, just because they are true?

Short answer: no.  I do not see how it helps the President or his program to admit his weaknesses. I do not see either why it helps the President get what he wants, as opposed to keeping his popularity ratings high, to go on the Jay Leno Show and otherwise indulge in forms of postmodern populism.  The American people are nervous right now, and have every right to be. There is a sharp deficit in anonymous trust in our institutions--not just the financial ones, all of them (except maybe the U.S. Army). The American people, if they can be distracted from their bread-and-circus entertainments, do not need a pal; they need a leader. They do not need commiseration from the Oval Office; they need confidence-building. They do not need a rock star, but a rock.

President Obama really has his hands full. He's in not a classical double-bind, but a triple bind. He wants to change the country, invest in human capital and social trust, but he cannot afford to do those things (assuming he knows how, which I don't assume except maybe in the energy area) until the economy rights itself. He doesn't know when that will happen or really know how to make it happen faster, but the way he has chosen to try will make his desire to invest that much harder a goal to reach. He knows that once (if?) the economy starts to rebound, he needs to throw on the spending brakes lest we end up with devastating inflation, and he seems honestly to be a sincere fiscal conservative. But he'll never get a grip on spending with this Congress in his face; they simply won't let him. He can't even roll Senator Conrad on farm subsidies, for heaven's sake. And thanks to the Congress, too, his underlying goal that he sees as a the key to making American democracy work again--to change the K Street transactional culture--recedes in the face of the other sides of the bind. 

In the end, of course, being stuck in this bind--economic straits, the investment limits they impose, and the impossibility of structural reform as a result of his being beholden to the Congress to deal with the first two parts of the bind--will ultimately hurt his popularity, and here timing, as usual, is everything.  He needs to avoid the Democrats getting pasted in the 2010 midterm elections if he is to rack up enough of a second-term victory to get real leverage over the Congress. He also needs to try again at bipartisanship, even though it is distasteful to him for good reason. But if he acts weak, even and especially if he is weak, he won't get the GOP help he could use.

He is still smiling; he is still popular; he is charmed in Europe and elsewhere. But he is not being effective yet in turning the great wheels of the ship of state. He doesn't have a lot of troops, a lot of "his" guys (think, by comparison, for example, how many chits Lyndon Johnson could call in by the time he got to the White House). He is dependent on others, and their interests are not the same as his. In this light to call attention publicly to what he can't do is not very wise.  He needs to cut that stuff out.