OVER THE CLIFF? OR ABOUT FACE AND CHARGE?

The Obama administration is through. It had one chance to get it right. What we will have now is stalemate because of the opposed aims of the president and the new Congress. Even if he is able to win another term, gridlock may continue and be followed by a rightist regime after '16.

Everything President Obama has done has been reasonable, pragmatic, moderate, well-intentioned. He is a decidedly superior person: cool-headed, intelligent, humane, honorable. What the rightists say about him is, typically, the opposite of the truth. But he has failed to communicate the rationale for his measures or even to convince us of who he truly is, a fact punctuated by the wild tales about him. (This is a new kind of liability. Nobody questioned the fundamental identities of Clinton and Carter. It is racial in part, but only in part.)

I like Barack Obama. And whenever I see him speak I'm impressed anew by his crisp presence and his charisma. In another time he might have been the right kind of leader for us.

I used to be impatient with the more liberal Democrats' impatience with him. I was for giving him the benefit of the doubt and letting things develop. But increasingly, especially after the disastrous election, their critique appears cogent to me.

Florida's fire-breathing Congressman Alan Grayson, defeated for a second term, accuses the administration of "appeasement." Along the same lines, New York City's veteran Congressman Jerrold Nadler charges the president with "political malpractice" -- arguing that he took halfway measures on the economy -- and jibes that he sounds like Herbert Hoover, crowing that recovery is here when it isn't.

The left's complaints include these:

>The administration has been defensive and semi-articulate instead of pressing for a mandate.

>The stimulus wasn't bold enough to revive our economic fortunes, though it may have prevented a fall-through into a full depression.

>Tim Geithner and the Wall Street bailout were wrong numbers.

>We continue to bleed industries and jobs.

>The wars haven't been ended and should be. We are not going to win in Afghanistan.

>Don't Ask, Don't Tell should be abolished, not fought for.

>Money from international corporations is now, thanks to the rightist Supreme Court, positioned to take over our political life. There must be a plan to avert that.

Meeting all of these issues requires a new style of leadership and therefore a new leader: one who is not detached and cerebral but visceral and spirited. Mr. Obama would be an excellent chief justice but is not the kind of person to be chief executive in this time of national crisis.

Polls continue to show that most voters prefer the Democrats to the Republicans. But, given our two-party arrangement, voting the Repubs in was their way of expressing no-confidence over the stalled economy, the mounting debt, and the sense that the administration is out of touch with the people. It was a bad answer but probably an inevitable one under the circumstances.

Polls always showed that most voters did not agree with Ronald Reagan's ultra-conservatism. But they supported him anyway. Why? Partly, no doubt, it was that they liked him personally and that he pushed our patriotic/triumphalist/can-do buttons. But, crucially, he projected conviction, purpose, and strength. The people saw him as in charge and on top of things. They thus gave him the benefit of the doubt as to everything else.

Obama is not a flailing outsider like Carter. Nor is he a clever and self-protective trimmer like Clinton. He is better than either of them and has accomplished far more, and history will say so. But better is not enough!

An administration cannot save us if it is positioned halfway between international corporations that appeal to hysteria over Marxism and Sharia law on the one hand, and a clear public-interest stance on the other. We must choose, not triangulate. With the Blue Dogs pretty much wiped out, the Congressional Dems will move to the left. They should, and we all should.

A challenger from Obama's left will probably step forward. There was talk of Howard Dean, but he has ruled himself out. Russ Feingold, beaten in Wisconsin, is mentioned but won't do it. These figures, while independent, are too conventional to undertake this task.

If you wanted to talk about Al Franken, you might be getting warmer or even hot. We would hear "Can't win the election," but those who wouldn't vote for a liberal Jew also didn't vote for a charming African-American.

A proponent of thoroughgoing democratic reform could not only inspire the 29 million Obama voters who stayed home this year but could pull away the better tea partiers, those who are anxious and confused but not reactionary and hateful.

We will be told that a party cannot repudiate its own record and survive. I should say, rather, that it cannot survive by persisting in a course that the people have already repudiated. The Democrats renominated Carter when they knew he couldn't win. The Labourites in England stayed with Gordon Brown even when they saw that he would sink them. The only question is whether the Dems want to be a party of lemmings or whether they would like another chance.

There should be a contest for the nomination. The differences within the party should be aired, not glossed over. Then the Dem electorate can go with either Obama or his rival, optimally choosing whichever is the more electable. What it must not settle for is being hapless and fatalistic.

The degree of personal forcefulness and internal fortitude projected by the alternative candidate will determine the outcome. This is a good time to pray -- and to rear up and organize.