Ideas did this. Incentives did this. Praise and self-interest and open challenges did this. Above all, creative individuals did this. And governments, mirabile dictu, hit the correct balance among instigating, facilitating and getting out of the way.

Recessions and depressions are illnesses, like running a potentially serious fever or flashing an early warning of a cancer or a heart attack. Governments need to know what to do to break the fever quickly, and get the listless and the faint of heart back up on their feet, raring to go. Obama doesn't know how. He keeps repeating the same mistakes. 

Concerning the presidential election already under way, a topmost adviser in the White House recently said to a Chicago friend: "From here, 2012 isn't 2008!" Support for President Obama in constituency after constituency is falling away like autumn leaves. Here is a telegraphic presentation of Obama's approval ratings on January 19, 2009 (Inauguration Day) compared with those of this autumn (data from Gallup). It shows a drop in support by independents (about a third of all voters nationwide) which is especially disheartening. 

Every week, more and more Democratic leaders and influential opinion-makers voice disappointment with Obama. Their disappointment soon gives way to revised judgments about the man's strengths and weaknesses. The strengths (his poise in speaking on his feet) appear ever emptier; his weaknesses (a rigid fixed sum of ideas, repetitively repaired to) more irreparable. One even hears it said by early and strong supporters, "He isn't as bright as he seemed." There is even talk after the months and months of uncritical adulation that there may be a need for a primary challenger to Obama (Hillary, some improbably suggest), to save the skins of the rest of his party. More and more of them do not wish to run on his policies.