(David Katz/Obama for America)

Barack Obama came to the White House intent on not repeating Clinton's failure to enact universal health care. Did he overlearn the Clinton lesson? Obama seems to have made all the right moves to enact something he can credibly label health-care reform: Rather than spend his political capital elsewhere, he reserved most of it for the health-care fight.

This may turn out to be a mistake comparable to Clinton's overemphasis on deficit reduction. Obama's focus on health care when the economy is still so fragile and unemployment moving toward double digits could make it appear that the administration has its priorities confused. While affordable health care is important to Americans, making a living is more immediately...