AMBITION.

According to Politico's Mike Allen, "the latest theme of pundit commentary on the Obama administration is overload." They're doing too much at once. The political system can't absorb health care and cap and trade and education and TARP and the homeowner bailout and the stimulus all at once. And maybe that's right. But it reminds me of a question Peter Orszag fielded at last week's budget presser. "Are you concerned," asked one of the reporters, "that you're asking Congress to do, like, too much?" "I sure hope not," replied Orszag. "We face very large problems that need to be addressed and we can't wait to address them." To add to that point: A lot of policy problems should have been addressed between 2000 and 2008. Climate change, for instance. Health care. The housing bubble. But there was little action on any of those fronts. And in the interim, they all worsened. The carbon load in the atmosphere is getting to the point that feedback loops will end any hope of averting a climate crisis. The economic burden of health costs has expanded to crushing dimensions. The housing bubble has popped. What's being sold, in other words, as tremendous ambition on the part of Obama's team could also be understood as the aftereffect of the lack of ambition that characterizing the Bush administration. What's strange isn't that they feel compelled to avert these mounting problems. It's that there are so many large dilemmas that have gone unaddressed.