So the press has latched onto this idea that President Obama is "trying to do too much at once." This, like other ideological trends in the press, isn't premised on anything concrete other than a general hostility to Obama's progressive agenda. I'm hard pressed to think of anyone arguing Bush "tried to do too much" by say invading Iraq soon after 9/11, but that's because the Beltway press had internalized conservative perspectives on basically everything, and this remains the case. Obviously it's not working, as Matthew Yglesias noted in response to Obama's education speech, "he’s not only moving forward boldly on the education front as well as on other issues, but that he’s moving forward across all major education fronts."
A word to the wise for those who think this line of argument will actually succeed at curbing Obama's ambitions: A black man who just got elected president of the United States is not going to be daunted by a bunch of talking heads telling him what he will or will not be able to do.
-- A. Serwer
