IF OBAMA'S POPULARITY DECLINES SIGNIFICANTLY, THIS WILL BE WHY

It's because he's setting in motion a lot of things the public wants and needs right now, but he's done so with no plan to prevent outcomes like this:

Somewhere on earth, there must be a more difficult task than this: persuading American mortgage companies to lower payments for homeowners who can no longer afford their loans. But as Karina Montenegro struggles to accomplish this feat for a troubled borrower, she strains to imagine a more futile pursuit....

Among her clients is Vladimir Vishmid, who owes $490,000 on the mortgage for his three-bedroom home in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles....

Software on Ms. Montenegro's computer logs the details of the three applications her company has submitted for Mr. Vishmid. Chris, the WaMu representative, is telling her to send in No. 4.

"Personally, I'd submit a new file," Chris counsels. "I'm telling you honestly, anything over 30 days is a new submission for us." ...

In the same office, Ms. Montenegro's colleague, Sean Milotta, has run into a problem on a loan billed by American Home Mortgage Servicing. Though the borrower appears eligible for the Obama administration plan, the company refuses to take an application because the loan is owned by an investor who is unwilling to absorb a loss.

In another office down the hall, Ramin Lavi, 27, has picked up the file of Alice Descovich, who is seeking to shave down the $708,000 she owes on a mortgage serviced by WaMu for her home in Alameda, Calif....

A note in the system shows that the bank confirmed receiving documents on April 29 -- pay stubs, tax returns, a letter disclosing her hardship, bank statements. Since then, the company has been waiting for WaMu to review the file.

But when Mr. Lavi calls, a representative coolly discloses that the application has been rejected because one document, a proof-of-insurance form, is missing. He must start over....

This is where the rubber meets the road. This is where the notion of activist government proves itself -- or doesn't. Get this kind of thing wrong and GOP rhetoric begins sounding persuasive to voters again -- specifically, rhetoric about how government is never the solution, always the problem, and about how the scariest words in English are "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

If you can't get better results than this -- because your legislation is too watered down, because your oversight is underfunded, because you're unable or unwilling to knock heads together, especially the heads of powerful special interests, to get the results you need -- then at least you have to use the bully pulpit to identify the enemies of progress. You have to do some sort of follow-through, just to keep faith with the public.

Health care can't be like this -- it just can't. If what results from legislation is byzantine, compromised, and corrupted, the failures can't be allowed to stand.

What worries me is that Obama doesn't seem to be very good at dealing with the stubborn and intransigent -- people who don't want him to succeed. His game plan always seems to anticipate that he can talk people out of resistance, and he seems surprised when he can't. (The latest example: the resistance he's getting on closing Guantanamo.) Even if he gets a good health care bill, the powerful are going to find ways to weasel out of doing the right thing. He needs to assume that from Day One, and be ready for it.