Each year about this time, the nation turns its weary eyes to Sacramento, where the perennial late-June budget crisis has the Golden State on the verge of bankruptcy.

This year, the numbers are gaudier than ever. The state must close a $24 billion gap between revenues and expenditures by July 1 or run short on operating cash. The gap to be closed is bigger than most states' budgets in their entirety. And while last-minute maneuvering has averted disaster in the past, this year's negotiations are proving fruitless.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed selling the L.A. Memorial Coliseum and San Quentin prison, releasing thousands of prison inmates, closing more than 200 state parks, wiping out welfare for a half-million families and terminating health care coverage for nearly a million children in low-income households. But even all that is not enough when tens of billions of dollars must be found.

There's only one place where people fling such numbers about routinely without irony or awe. And that one place is Washington, D.C. That's why lots of Californians, cool as ever, shrug their well-tanned shoulders and say the feds will bail them out. Just like GM and AIG. Just like the banks.

Well, yes and no.

Yes, California is important to the health of the broader economy and body politic. Yes, California contributes 14 percent of the total national economy. If it were a separate country, its economy would be among the eight largest in the world.

And yes, the bankruptcy of its state government may well throw thousands of state and local government employees out of work, prompting more layoffs in the private sector. Staggered by such dislocation, California could slow or even abort the nation's nascent recovery from recession.

If that's not enough pressure on the president, consider the politics. All by itself, California supplies one-fifth of the Electoral College votes a candidate needs to become president, and in 2008 it cast its vote overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. Any strategy for his re-election begins here.

Moreover, the speaker of the House and the chairmen of a half-dozen major congressional committees all hail from California, which also happens to be by far the richest trove of campaign funds for all candidates for federal office.

And yet, and yet ... no.

No, the federal government is not about to bail out the state government of California. The cavalry is not riding to the rescue.

President Obama has expressed alarm, of course, but if you listen closely to what he says, you'll hear the federal Treasury door slamming shut. The White House has made it clear: Budget bailouts for individual state governments are not happening.

That's a source of frustration and anger for Californians, inclined as they are to believe that Washington is as much to blame for their predicament as Sacramento. They see little to admire in the budget shenanigans of other states and still less to emulate in the budgetary practices of Capitol Hill.

From the coastal perspective, putting California in the penalty box seems a pious show of parsimony and the height of Washington hypocrisy. Who can argue that California has been more profligate than, say, New York or Illinois? Or that its decisions have been more reckless than those of GM?

The difference, of course, is fairly simple. When the Obama administration decided to bail out GM, it did not have 49 other car companies standing in line behind it. A bailout for California would establish a profound precedent. If Washington decided to underwrite Sacramento this year, it would be on the hook to do it every year. And how could the White House or Congress say no to any other state that couldn't bring itself to balance its own books?

Wait now, the Californians say, it's not that simple. It's not that they don't want to be provident. The economy is down and unemployment is up, higher in California than anywhere but Michigan. State income tax revenue, the lifeblood of the budget, has fallen off by more than 30 percent. How can you blame California for its own suffering?

It's a decent argument. But four other states have experienced income tax declines equally steep or steeper. And none of them is a basket case as bad as California. That's because they all have a political mechanism for dealing with a budget crisis, even one so severe as this.

California, sadly, does not. That's why its current crisis is not really economic; it's governmental. California's political model has failed at the basic tasks of negotiation and compromise by which public sector budgets are built.

A century ago, progressive Californians such as Gov. Hiram Johnson installed populist inventions such as the initiative and referendum process. They did it to wrest control of the Legislature from the Southern Pacific Railroad and other monopolies.
In recent decades, these populist mechanisms have become increasingly popular as means to subvert the normal (and often gridlocked) legislative process. They have been used to commit the state to big spending programs for popular items like early education, but their main effect has been to limit revenue options severely.

Beginning with the watershed Proposition 13 in 1978, the state has hamstrung itself by walling off property values of longtime owners from tax inflation. Politically, it's hugely popular. In terms of fairness, economics and government policy, it's disastrous.

If that were not enough, the state Constitution also requires the budget to pass by two-thirds vote, the same vote required to raise taxes. Needless to say, doing either one has become impossible for all practical purposes.

Some elements of the state power structure have tried this year to regain control over the budget with new ballot measures designed to break the stalemate. But the April voting drew only a trickle of turnout, and the result was a lopsided refusal to pay any more or do with any less.

At this point, all sides seem resolved to remain at impasse and let someone else blink first.

After all, you can't just let California go.

Or can you?

Even misfortune can be well timed. And if you have to have your lower leg in a cast and make your way on crutches for a while, why not do it when it can do you some good?

So it is for Judge Sonia Sotomayor, whose nomination to the Supreme Court is pending in the Senate. She may be hobbled for a few weeks, but her confirmation is now definitely on wheels.

Boarding a shuttle flight in New York for her appointments in Washington this week, the appellate judge suffered a small fracture of her right ankle. But she immediately announced she would keep up her schedule of schmoozing the U.S. senators who will vote on her nomination.

That means for the next few weeks we will see the New Yorker efforting through Senate hallways with a plucky grin or a look of determination.

It's perfect.

Like it or not, getting Senate confirmation to a high-profile post has a lot to do with public acceptance, which depends largely on the human factor. Of course the approval ratings of the nominating president matter, as do the qualifications and views of the nominee. But you can't overlook that personal impression.

That is why current Chief Justice John Roberts was easily confirmed and Robert Bork was rejected -- even though their views may be hard to tell apart. Roberts appealed to the popular imagination as Mr. Perfect and Mr. Perfectly Humble. Bork came across as an arrogant, overbearing professor who wanted to be on the court to sample the "intellectual feast."

Consider too the last addition to the court, Justice Samuel Alito, who was chosen late in 2005 by President George W. Bush. Alito was the president's second choice after Harriet Miers, who had withdrawn after stirring controversy among conservatives. He was a man replacing a woman on the court (Sandra Day O'Connor) and a doctrinaire conservative replacing a moderate swing voter. But he had another problem. Call it judicial temperament if you like, but he came across as a bit of a cold fish.

No surprise, then, that initial reaction to the Alito nomination was tepid. An Ipsos survey in USA Today found only 38 percent of Americans backing him shortly after he was named. Among Republicans and evangelical Christians, his support was higher, but not nearly as high as Roberts had enjoyed earlier in the same year.

The Fox News poll had his backing at just 45 percent when the hearings began, and Alito's confirmation was by no means a done deal. Democrats, sensing a fresh wind at their back, were talking about a filibuster.

The hearings featured a monotonic Alito giving noncommittal answers to an array of Democratic inquisitors. The atmosphere grew increasingly tense until, on the second day, a Republican senator supporting Alito recited a long litany of the attacks against him. Suddenly, Alito's wife, Martha-Ann, broke down sobbing in her front row seat. She left the hearing room in tears.

The moment was captured and replayed endlessly on video that day and night and featured on the nation's front pages the next day. From then on, the anxiety that had hung in the room seemed to dissipate. At week's end, polls showed the public preferred Alito's performance to that of the committee. The die was cast: The ultimate Senate vote to confirm was 58 to 42.

Sotomayor's poll numbers have been better than Alito's from the start. A Quinnipiac University poll of more than 3,400 people nationwide in the first week of June found 55 percent supporting her confirmation. Her numbers held up among all races and religious groups except white evangelical Christians, who opposed her nomination 41 percent to 35 percent.

The very same Quinnipiac poll also found clear majorities in all categories disagreeing with Sotomayor on her most famous ruling. That would be the case in which she upheld the city of New Haven's decision to throw out a firefighters promotion exam on which minority applicants did poorly. Quinnipiac found more than 70 percent disagreed with that ruling, and 55 percent thought affirmative action should be abolished.

But at the same time, people didn't seem to hold the New Haven ruling against Sotomayor personally. That may be because her human characteristics, lifelong struggle and exemplary success still resonate with people of all kinds and views. Her personal story (diagnosed with diabetes at 8, losing her father at 9) has been a hit since the day President Obama stood with her at the White House and she saluted her mother, weeping in the front row.

In recent days, some of the early resistance to her nomination has weakened. Some of her most outspoken detractors have retracted their most quoted comments (Newt Gingrich said he shouldn't have called her a racist). Former first lady Laura Bush went on ABC saying Sotomayor's nomination made her feel proud as a woman.

In other words, being on Sotomayor's side seems the better place to be. In the end, the broken ankle may be just one more apparent disadvantage that ultimately makes this woman stronger, and harder to resist.

In his effort to reach out to the Muslim world from a lectern in Cairo, President Obama relied on the stark differences separating him from former president George W. Bush. This was at once the underlying strength of the speech, and its ultimate weakness.

Those who heard the speech, or who will hear of it, cannot fail to note the change of regime. For the Muslim world, and others disenchanted with the previous American president, nothing could be more welcome.

But from this point forward, the great virtue of being someone other than George W. Bush will pay diminishing returns. And while the speech foresaw a far better world for Muslims everywhere, it did not include a clear path or plan for getting there.

Unquestionably a visionary, the new American president is still working on being an architect and an engineer.

Perhaps it is too soon, even premature, for the new president to offer much in the way of concrete steps. He did grasp the nettle of Israel, at least briefly, acknowledging its right to exist alongside that of Palestine. He did scold the Israelis over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and the expanding settlements in occupied territory, saying: "It is time for these settlements to stop."

But he did not go beyond what has been said on that subject before, notably in the early months of the administration of George W. Bush. On Nov. 16, 2001, Bush's secretary of state, Colin Powell, said this about the settlements in occupied territory:

"Israeli settlement activity has severely undermined Palestinian trust and hope. It pre-empts and prejudges the outcome of negotiations and, in doing so, cripples chances for real peace and security. The United States has long opposed settlement activity. ... Settlement activity must stop. For the sake of Palestinians and Israelis alike, the occupation must end."

In restraining himself on this as well as other subjects of extreme sensitivity, Obama was again using the combination of caution and candor we came to know over two years of presidential campaigning.

Once again, as in that campaign, the most resonant themes sounded by the new president were largely personal. Such as his name, his race and his personal story. The presence of Islam in his cultural DNA. All these elements are unique in the history of American presidents and can scarcely fail to impress.

Beyond that, this man, this new symbol of a different America, stands in contrast to his immediate predecessor in his fundamental worldview. Where the former president said terrorists simply "hate freedom," the new president finds the roots of resentment against the U.S. in centuries of Western colonialism.

And while he repeated the standard presidential vow to defend Americans against global threats, he described quite a different understanding of the threats. There was no reference, for example, to the word "evil." And when he spoke of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he called it "a war of choice," as opposed to a war of necessity.

These shifts on issues combine with his unique identity to inform the Obama appeal to Muslims, as well as to the international community in general. The combination has been enormously effective, and it may in time change the course of world events.

But the new president can rely on the newness and the contrast for only so long. Starting on a high note of expectation sets him up for dramatic downturns. As he acts to defend and represent American interests, as he inevitably must, he will seem less different. He will seem more American.

Touring the Great Pyramid at Giza after making his speech, the president was shown a hieroglyphic he found familiar. "It looks like me," he said, pointing to the prominent ears. His guide said the figure represented a man who had been a judge, a scholar and a priest. The president smiled.

A priest, a judge and a scholar. In his speech, Obama seemed to be reaching for a bit of all three. But as his presidency continues, he realizes he must expand his resume of careers. He will need to be a builder. Imagining the world as it could be is not enough.

The default mode of Barack Obama is motion; the activism of his young presidency is everywhere in evidence.

From the day he took office, he has been a blur of executive orders and challenges to Congress, almost manic in reacting to economic upheaval at home and threats abroad — all the while pushing for new national systems for health care, energy use and education.

So it seemed a dramatic contrast this week to see him cooped up in a small space deep within the White House, sitting for a joint interview by NPR hosts Michele Norris and Steve Inskeep.

Was that really the national symbol, the focus of so much global excitement, folded into a modest chair in the ground-level library? Amid this rather casual collection of books, the man's legendary aura and energy seemed almost caged — temporarily under house arrest.

Those in the room saw Inskeep and Norris bore in on Middle East policy, the president engaging with his typical seriousness but less than his usual buoyancy. The problems discussed are vexing, and the vexation shows.

Check the presidential costume: black suit, white shirt, stylish silk tie (solid cerulean blue), preternatural calm. Check, double-check. He is fully himself, and yet not so. A note of weariness creeps into an answer. A sense of late afternoon hangs in the room.

The impression may have come from the day the president had already logged. In the morning, he had announced the bankruptcy filing of General Motors. Once the greatest private manufacturing concern in the world, the jewel of American capitalism, GM was becoming a ward of the state.

After that sobering event, the president paid a visit to Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, where he met with more than 50 patients wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. He awarded Purple Hearts. Both wars continue under his regime, and the fighting in Afghanistan is escalating.

It was also a day of news dominated by an airliner lost at sea and an abortion doctor shot dead at his church on Sunday morning. But beyond the downbeat tone of the day's affairs, the presidential attitude seemed to anticipate the week ahead — and the weeks to come.

This week takes Obama abroad, pursuing U.S. aims in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Europe. The centerpiece of the trip is a speech at Cairo University billed as an address to the Muslim world.

It is not often that one national leader is able to address hundreds of millions of people in foreign lands, let alone to do so with the intent of changing their minds about his country. But the unique circumstances of this one man's birth and upbringing, his name and phenomenal rise, have made such a moment possible.

The president is clearly mindful of the Cairo moment — its enormous potential to alter the pattern of decades and generations of hostility and misunderstanding. Even for a president, this is a weighty assignment. And this president is a man who writes his most important speeches largely by himself, sacrificing sleep for the splendid concentration of the wee hours.

Whatever may happen with the speech and world reaction, the president will return from his trip facing critical tests on Capitol Hill between now and the August recess. The main one is House consideration of a bill overhauling the health care delivery system. The president said this week that these two months will be "the make-or-break period ... the time where we've got to get this done."

All other issues, even the energy bill and the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, will be distractions. This president in his first year will be judged on how he handles health care no less than on his stewardship of the economy. And health care is not a hurdle he can clear with a speech, no matter how eloquent or visionary.

Contemplating all this might make anyone's demeanor somber.