It was nothing if not bold. Far from sliding away from his promise to reform healthcare, Obama affirmed it by proposing a $635 billion “downpayment” on the cost, financed about equally by high-income taxpayers and by squeezing Medicare payments to private providers. To announce an initiative of that scale and scope in the same budget that predicts a $1.75 trillion deficit in 2009, and a full-employment deficit of 3% of GDP even after ten years of brisk recovery and steady growth, took some nerve. Obama clearly has plenty. Left-leaning Democrats who have spent recent weeks moaning about centrist appointments and attempts at outreach to Republicans should hang their heads in shame. This is the budget they have been dreaming about for years.

I am not what you would call an instinctive leftist Democrat, yet so far as substance goes I like a great deal of what is there. The intelligence of this administration shines through at many points. My objections are mostly about the gaps.