On Friday, Mike Memoli at Politics Nation reported on this interesting comment from President Obama while overseas:

During a press conference at the conclusion of the G-8 Summit in L'Aquila, Obama was asked about the future of these international bodies. He said leaders should consider refreshing and renewing institutions like the G8 and even the United Nations. "A lot of energy is going into these various summits and organizations in part because there's a sense that when it comes to big, tough problems, the UN General Assembly is not always working as effectively and rapidly as it needs to," he said.

The President went on to say this:

The one thing I will be looking forward to is fewer summit meetings, because, as you said, I've only been in office six months now and there have been a lot of these. And I think that there's a possibility of streamlining them and making them more effective. The United States obviously is a absolutely committed partner to concerted international action, but we need to I think make sure that they're as productive as possible.

This comment reads a bit prickly to me. It's not the greatest of form to complain about summits while you're finishing up a summit! It makes me wonder if the President has been spread a wee bit too thin. Early in his term, when the White House indicated that it had no intentions of paring back its agenda for this year, despite the recession and the wars - many commentators suggested that this was simply too much for any one Administration to do. Yet the White House pressed forward with it, anyway. Obama inherited a banking system that - even if the worst of the crisis was over - still needed some long-term reforms. He also inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression. Additionally, there were unresolved issues with the Big Three auto manufacturers. And then of course there was the military effort in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which the Commander-in-Chief can put on the back burner, even if the the public has. Plus, any new administration has to put in significant efforts at staffing, and making the international rounds. On top of all this, the President added a push for major overhauls of health care, energy, and education.

That's a lot to handle.

The modern presidency has expanded over the last eighty years. This is one reason why I'm slightly bemused by historians who rank the Presidents - as if you could do an apples-to-apples comparision of Chester A. Arthur's administration to George H.W. Bush's! The role of the presidency has ballooned for many reasons, including: (a) the United States' role in foreign affairs has expanded, and the Constitution invests the President with great power on that front; (b) the power of the federal level of government has expanded, and the executive branch is charged with carrying out all federal dictates; (c) Congress has ceded more and more policymaking power to the executive branch over the years.

It's a substantially different job now than it was in the last century. But one thing has remained constant: the person who holds the office is just a person, with all the limitations that entails. The biggest one is probably time. Though the office has grown by leaps and bounds, the President's time in the day for work has remained stubbornly constant at 24 hours, not including sleeping and eating!

I wonder if we are seeing the consequences of this. Despite what was implied by some of the President's campaign imagery, he is still just a man. Has the White House overloaded his plate? If so, what might the consequences of this be? A recent report from Bloomberg implies one possibility:

President Barack Obama, after a week of diplomacy abroad, now faces the possible derailment of his top priority at home, the overhaul of the health-care system.

The Senate Finance Committee has failed to come up with a bill, and Chairman Max Baucus is under pressure from other Democrats to curb his efforts to reach out to Republicans. While House leaders are scheduled to unveil legislation today that will include a surtax on the wealthiest Americans, they were forced to delay a draft bill last week that drew fire from the White House and dozens of their own members.

The White House's role in the crafting of legislation is informal, which implies that the President is at his best when he uses the prestige of the office to charm (or threaten!) legislators to go the way he wants. Ultimately, this requires his time and attention. Is this something Obama has been able to give?

Dueling headlines on Drudge suggest this point as well as anything. The first is a link to a Sports Illustrated article reporting that Obama will be in the broadcast booth for the All-Star game. That sounds like a trifle, but there surely are several White House staffers working on what the President will say. And then of course, the President will need to be briefed on it, maybe a little practice, and so on. This is not an insignificant time commitment. Right next to this link is another to a Washington Post report that stops just short of calling his staff the "walking dead," but still notes:

All West Wings face fatigue at some point, but the Obama team has had a particularly frenetic start, the result of inheriting the worse economic crisis since the Great Depression and the team's own seemingly chaotic drive to push an agenda that includes the creation of a new health insurance system, auto bailouts, Middle East peace, nuclear nonproliferation, two wars and education reform...

Martin Moore-Ede, a former Harvard University professor, calls it the "iron man" syndrome and says the American political workplace is one of the few that still resists a mechanism for ensuring people get rest.

One study conducted for the British Parliament found that "mental fatigue affects cognitive performance, leading to errors of judgement, microsleeps (lasting for seconds or minutes), mood swings and poor motivation." The effect, it found, is equal to a blood alcohol level of .10 percent -- above the legal limit to drive in the United States.

Maybe it's time to ease the throttle down. A good place to start might be the unnecessary appearance in the All Star Game broadcast booth!