Chasing shiny objects.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Editor's Note - Barack Obama's political agenda - Editorial

In a nonelection year like this one, the narrative arc of American politics is set by the State of the Union address. The president lays out his policy proposals, and for the rest of the year Washington reporters follow the drama of how those proposals are faring in Congress. The story tends to unfold like one of those bloody adventure movies where most of the characters die along the way and only a handful of plucky, wounded ones survive. This year's version promises to be especially gory.

In February, Barack Obama confidently put forth an ambitious agenda: a long-term budget grand bargain that would change entitlements and overhaul the tax code; major reforms of immigration and higher education; sweeping new gun safety measures; a national preschool program; a network of advanced manufacturing hubs; and two continent-spanning free trade deals. But a radicalized and dysfunctional Republican Party shows only the most hesitant willingness to cooperate, and the media has already concluded, probably rightly, that little of Obama's agenda is likely to become law. Expectations will be more than met if, in twelve or eighteen months, we have an immigration compromise that provides a path to citizenship for the eleven million undocumented, a modest budget agreement that stabilizes the medium-term debt-to-GDP ratio, and universal background checks that might bring down a murder rate that is already falling.

While these are worthy and important fights to have, the most consequential drama of 2013 will not be the battle over Obama's second-term agenda. It will be the struggle to implement his first-term achievements--which, truth be told, dwarf anything he is likely to get out of Congress going forward. Obamacare, the Rooseveltian capstone of his presidency, will, if it can be made to work, deliver health care to twenty-seven million uninsured Americans and begin the task of reining in health care cost growth. Dodd-Frank, for all its many flaws, is a massive, complex rewriting of regulation for the entire financial sector, the success or failure of which could determine whether or not we go through another financial meltdown.

Most Americans, even those who are politically plugged in, tend to think that once a law is signed, it's done. But a law animates real change only after agency bureaucrats turn its words, often written vaguely to bridge disagreements among lawmakers, into specific actionable rules and regulations. Two-thirds of the regulations...