In the larger scheme of national politics, the troubles of one House committee chairman are little more than a sideshow. But in the context of this political moment in this political year, the troubles of Rep. Charles W. Rangel (D-NY) are more than a mere distraction.

Far larger forces are engaged in the struggle over health care and other issues before Congress, and Rangel has been less a key player this past year than he might have been. By November, the image of Rangel's fall may have faded. And certainly the battle for control of Congress will be won and lost on a broader playing field.

Still, impressions of institutions are made of stories and personalities. People remember what they hear or read about cases such as Rangel's, which can easily become emblematic. And for the Democrats, that is problematic. The failure to contain such damage can cost a party its momentum, its mandate and -- under certain circumstances -- its majority.

Rangel has stepped aside as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, pending the outcome of inquiries by the House ethics committee on a variety of charges, some of which could have legal repercussions beyond the House. He says he will be back; virtually no one outside his operation expects that to happen.

Getting Rangel out of the spotlight for the moment is the best thing his beleaguered party can hope for. But he has already done more than enough -- and been unrepentant enough about it -- to affect perceptions of the Democrats who run the House. And that practically guarantees he will be featured in Republican attack ads in the fall.

Rangel has already been admonished by the ethics committee, for vacationing in the Caribbean at corporate expense. Still out there are charges that he accepted the use of four rent-controlled apartments in New York City that were owned by a developer. Rangel has not been able to satisfy tax authorities on this matter, nor on unpaid taxes on his property in the Dominican Republic.

All of which looks bad for a guy who runs the committee that writes federal tax law. It's especially embarrassing because the intramural watchdog panels in Congress are not known for their teeth. On the same day this group put the bite on Rangel, they gave a pass to half a dozen other lawmakers who were earmarking appropriations for contributors.

For now, Hill Democrats and the Obama administration have to be grateful that Rangel was not a larger symbol of their party than he has been. When President Clinton was struggling through his first two years in office, he had to deal with the flaming out of another Ways and Means chairman, Dan Rostenkowski. The illustrious "Rosty" had been chairman for a dozen years, working sometimes with and sometimes against Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

He was integral enough to the power structure of that time that he was known to say his committee and the House were one and the same.

But when the Democrats of that era finally got a president of their own in Clinton, Rostenkowski was found to have been engaged in systematic (if relatively petty) abuses of House privileges such as free stamps. His beefy visage became the arrogant face of the 40-year Democratic majority -- the caricature of Washington that the Republicans needed in their campaign that ended that majority in 1994. Rostenkowski was among the Democrats defeated that fall, and he later served time in federal prison.

Rangel had been chairman of Ways and Means for just three years, two of which were served with George W. Bush still in the White House and Washington at an impasse. In the past year, Rangel had engineered the tax-cut portion of the stimulus package and made himself important on the climate change bill. But the action on health care was elsewhere, and Rangel himself never became a household name on the national level.

Of course, Rangel's reversal of fortune is a huge story in New York, where he has been a force of nature in Harlem since he deposed the legendary Adam Clayton Powell Jr. in 1970. Rangel was one of a generation of black politicians that has now reached its moment of eclipse. Another was Percy Sutton, who died this winter. One of their contemporaries, Basil Paterson, was the father of New York Gov. David Paterson.

There is no connection between Rangel's current travails and those of Basil Paterson's son, who this week was battling to hold on to his job amid the latest scandal to engulf his administration (and who is no longer running for re-election in November). But there is a sense that an era is passing, and New York will be finding a new generation of leaders.

Rangel remains safe in his own district, for now. But the old Harlem-dominated district is different now, and less than 30 percent African-American. In the next census, it could well be majority Hispanic. By then, it is entirely possible Rangel will have left not only his chairmanship but his seat as well.

Dysfunction in the Capitol has a new face this week, or at least a different old face. Say hello to Jim Bunning, the Republican senator from Kentucky who is retiring this year. He's chosen to go out in a blaze of what he surely regards as glory.

Bunning, 78, is best known as a Hall of Fame pitcher who left baseball after 17 seasons with a Major League reputation for being competitive and cantankerous. Departing the Capitol later this year after 12 seasons, Bunning is likely to leave a similar legacy.

Just now, the man is engaged in a lonely crusade to become a fiscal hero, using tactics likely to attract national attention. That he can do so all by himself, with the rest of Congress nearly powerless to stop him, is a reality few in the Senate want to talk about. It is a reality most Americans find hard to believe, when they become aware of it.

Right now, Bunning is making millions of Americans aware of it for the first time.

After two terms as one of the chamber's most conservative voices, Bunning remains far from a household name. But that may be changing, as he has found a way to hold up an extension of unemployment payments for millions of jobless Americans. The same stream that Bunning is damming is also blocking a fee adjustment that doctors performing Medicare services had been counting on. Bunning is likely to hear from a few doctors on that score. And if the interruption lasts long enough to disrupt services, he will hear from patients as well.

Early in February, one of Bunning's Republican colleagues, Richard Shelby of Alabama, made himself a lot more famous overnight by placing a blanket hold on more than 60 nominations pending before the Senate. Plenty of senators have used their power to filibuster to place these holds on bills and nominees. But Shelby took it to a new level, attracted national notice and was soon the subject of a tete a tete between President Obama and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell. The upshot was that Shelby removed the holds without getting the appropriations goodies for Alabama he was holding out for.

Bunning, apparently, missed that message. Acting in the style of a lone wolf that characterized both his pitching and political careers, the Kentuckian went to the Senate floor on his own and blocked passage of an "extenders" package on Feb. 25. Because the Senate requires unanimous consent to proceed to a bill, Bunning's posture locked the package in limbo -- even though it is acknowledged to have the support of an overwhelming bipartisan majority in both Senate and House.

Bunning admits this is so. But he says he is holding the Senate's feet to the fire because the cost of this bill, approximately $10 billion, is not offset by cuts to other programs. If the Senate is going to pride itself on passing "pay-as-you-go" legislation one day and then approve unfunded spending the next, the hypocrisy needs to be exposed.

No argument there. Bunning has caught his colleagues in the kind of have-it-both-ways charade both parties have indulged in for decades.

But Bunning's gambit here is objectionable in two significant ways.

First, on the substance, his crusade reduces to a demand that others yield their priorities to his. His call for sacrifice would have more meaning if he were coming forward with one of his own. Instead, his prescription for lowering the deficit is to stop spending on programs he personally opposes (such as the economic stimulus program) to pay for others he supports.

What senator wouldn't want the power to impose his or her own trade-offs by fiat? And why wouldn't another senator who hates the deficit and believes in fair share taxation take to the floor, Bunning-style, hold up the jobless benefits and insist the Senate vote a tax increase on Wall Street (or another popular target) to pay for them?

The second objection is Bunning's presumption, shared by Shelby and many others, that he can throw the ultimate wrench into the works and literally walk away. Thinking the Senate would fold its tent once he had threatened to filibuster, Bunning was expecting to go home at the usual time. He was shocked when Democrats -- led by Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin -- confronted him, coming to the floor to recite statistics about unemployment in Kentucky. Bunning seethed and said he'd been made a the victim of an ambush.

He may have felt that way because he did not have a corresponding posse of Republicans on hand at first to help him hold the floor. This week, he may. But what Bunning has done poses a dilemma for McConnell, who has had his share of travails with his fellow Kentucky senator over the years (and played no small role in easing him toward the exit). Will the leader line up the GOP behind Bunning's right to derail a bipartisan bill? It won't make his own caucus happy to be seen in this light, just now but McConnell must also defend the minority's sacred right to filibuster.

Without that, 41 senators might not be able to go on pushing 59 senators around.

For all the angst and anger, and after all the billable hours and airtime, President Obama's health care summit comes down to this: moving the polls just enough to make a difference.

That's what the White House hopes to gain, and what the Republican opposition fears. It's why the Blair House event is happening and why the GOP did not feel it could pull a boycott.

Right now, the consensus of polling finds the legislation mired at less than 40 percent approval. And as long as that number is "under water," it's too large a lift for nervous Democrats and too fat a target for triumphant Republicans.

So getting something done depends on making that something at least a little more popular than what Congress coughed up in 2009. Gaining even a handful of percentage points in the polls, say 5 to 10, is crucial to prospects for a bill this year.

And gaudy double-digit increases in private health insurance premiums, like the 39-percent boost announced by Anthem Blue Cross in California, give the overhaulers a fresh way to press their case.

How The Majority Lost Its Mojo

At a minimum, the president wants to get back some of his bipartisan cred, tagging the Republicans as the partner less willing to tango. The public tells pollsters it wants the parties to work together, and both are loath to disrespect that desire.

So that's a good place to start. Ergo the summit, and ergo the presence of all those Republicans checking their watches.

But grabbing the bipartisan ring is not the biggest motive here. The White House is worried about polling on the bill itself -- or more precisely, the polling on people's notions of the bill.

With all the Democrats' difficulties -- their own lack of discipline, their opposition's rigorous unity and the Senate's tendency to empower an organized minority -- the biggest hurdle of all has been the troubled public image of the legislation itself. Every time the president gave a speech and got people thinking they wanted his big overhaul to happen, the next story people read made them wonder: Is this really good for me? What are these people in Washington up to?

The balance tipped perilously when the Democrats chose to isolate the balky Republicans with a 60-vote strategy. The idea was that 58 Democrats and two independents could stand together and take away the filibuster weapon. That strategy came to an end with the election of another Republican in Massachusetts, but "having 60 votes" had already proved to be a poisoned chalice.

In pursuit of the 60-vote mirage, Democratic Leader Harry Reid found himself over a barrel every time one of his supposed 60 went rogue. And that's what they did, one after another, cutting special deals for the benefit of their states, for their favored constituencies and for their own personal standing back home.

That not only robbed the majority of its mojo, it made an increasingly ugly spectacle of the process and left the bill looking like a pastiche of special deals.

No wonder, then, that even those people who tell pollsters they want to cover the uninsured, accept the individual mandate and even support the public option to private health insurance wind up opposing the bill that's supposed to do all the above.

Polls And The Will Of The People

Polls such as the latest by ABC News and The Washington Post have found solid majorities favoring the major elements of the legislation, yet still unenthused about the whole. The bill has become something other than the sum of its parts. It is the sum of its flaws, or in some cases, the sum of the slurs against it.

Such polls have been a tremendous boon to the Republicans, who oppose the component parts as well as the bill overall. The best argument they can muster has been the same since the Senate floor debate in December. In the oft-repeated phrase of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, "The American people have already rejected these bills."

If you are the minority in Congress, facing a majority that has nearly 60 percent of the seats in both chambers, it is enormously helpful to be able to invoke the will of the people and point to polls that back you up.

Conversely, for a Democratic president and Democratic leaders in Congress, economic policy is supposed to be about pushing solutions that benefit the broad base of society. If that base is not convinced the solution is in their interest, the accusations of elitism will stick and sting.

That is why no bill that the White House and Democratic leaders fashion will be able to count on even bare majorities in the House and Senate until it can at least break even in the polls.

Members of the National Governors Association are meeting with President Obama today after a weekend black tie affair at the White House. It's fair to guess that more than a few of the guests took the opportunity to check out the place with an eye toward future occupancy.

One or more of them may live at 1600 someday. Before President Obama, four of the previous five presidents were governors. As recently as the last presidential cycle, the major Republican contenders included two former governors: Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. A sitting governor, Sarah Palin, wound up as the vice presidential nominee.

But if the NGA has long been a forest of presidential timber, the current crop seems suddenly rather sparse.

Over the weekend, this gang of governors looked more like a battered raft of refugees than presidential contenders. Hard times are no kinder to governors than they are to presidents, and right now the sputtering recovery and stubborn unemployment numbers are weighing heavily on the state's most visible leaders.

Consumed with problems close to home, the governors have not been big players in the health care debate or other national issues in the past year. And the same dynamic affects their own personal ambitions.

Beyond the bad economic numbers, intraparty unrest and just plain bad timing seem to be putting the ultimate political prize beyond the gubernatorial grasp.

Consider the usual suspects -- the governors from the 10 most populous states. Starting at the top, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger of California is foreign-born, and so constitutionally barred from the presidency (or vice presidency). Thinking down the road, the same applies to Democrat Jennifer Granholm of Michigan.

But given that unemployment in their two states averages 13 percent, it's probably just as well.

Normally, Republicans might be promoting their incumbents from hyperpopulous Texas and Florida. Instead, those two men are locked in tough primary fights. Rick Perry, seeking a third term in Austin, is forced to fend off a popular senator and a Tea Party favorite in his primary next week. The road is even rougher for Charlie Crist in Florida, who now trails his rival for the Senate nomination in the GOP's August primary.

Democrats aren't looking for a presidential candidate these days, and that's lucky, considering their gubernatorial bench. Two of their current big-state incumbents are hobbled because they became governor via scandal. Democrat Pat Quinn of Illinois stepped in when Rod Blagojevich was impeached last year, and Democrat David Paterson took over in New York when Eliot Spitzer resigned over his use of call girls.

Quinn has now been nominated for a gubernatorial term in his own right, while Paterson has been embroiled in imbroglios of his own.

Somewhat happier Democrats are running the government in Ohio and Pennsylvania. But Ted Strickland is battling to hang on to his current job in Columbus while Ed Rendell in Harrisburg is term-limited after this year. Both have firmly turned down shots at the national ticket in the past, and neither shows any symptoms of Potomac fever right now.

Rounding out the Top 10 most populous states are Georgia and North Carolina, both with governors named Perdue. Democrat Bev Perdue is just past her first year in office in North Carolina. Republican Sonny Perdue in Georgia (no relation) is winding up a sometimes troubled second term in office and, while he has been chairman of the Republican Governors Association, he has not made an overt move toward a national campaign.

Looking beyond the megastates, there are several governors and former governors with thoughts of Iowa and New Hampshire in the near future. One even has an exploratory committee up and running already for 2012.

He is two-term Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, moderate enough to win in his blue state in the past, but lately breathing fire to the right. He's leaving his job at the end of the year, despite his eligibility for another term. He has that in common with three other potential 2012 candidates -- Romney, Huckabee and Palin -- all of whom could have been governor longer but opted out. The governorship might be a good line on a resume, but it's best not to let it be the bottom line.

Pawlenty came to town last week to speak to the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he veered into social issues and assured the crowd that "God is in charge." Nonetheless, he received just 6 percent in the CPAC presidential straw poll, which was won by libertarian Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas, the ideological antithesis of the gubernatorial model.

All the same, there are those who believe a governor will be the next GOP nominee, and they still look South for one. Haley Barbour is riding high as governor of Mississippi and can point to his success as chairman of the Republican National Committee in the early 1990s, when he helped engineer his party's comeback in the 1994 elections. Barbour has lately been known to linger on the thought of a return to Washington, although he still says a bid for president is unlikely.

One Southern Republican who had attracted speculation, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, saw his stock crash after his widely panned response to an Obama address in 2009. While Jindal has yet to find his way back onto the shortlist for 2012, he remains on the plus side of public feeling at home. And at 38, he has plenty of cycles ahead of him.

That's more than can be said for another governor who was once a mentionee, Mark Sanford of South Carolina. Sanford's marital meltdown was national news for his secret tryst in South America and his rambling televised confession. But he has scarcely been the only governor in the doghouse. Republican Jim Gibbons in Nevada recently reached a settlement with his wife of 23 years, who accused him of serial affairs, including one with a Playboy model.

Not many other governors can match that kind of publicity. But not many inspire the kind that makes governors into presidents, either.

The Conservative Political Action Conference comes to Washington this week, holding the winter conference it has held annually since the 1970s in good times for conservatives and bad.

So which kind of times are we in now? When you look at the residents at 1600 Pennsylvania and the majorities in Congress, you would think the worst. But guess again. CPAC this year has moved to a bigger hotel and expects a record crowd.

A year ago the CPAC gathering was rather downbeat, stunned by the breadth and depth of the Democrats' national victories in 2008. But this year will be something else again. Conservatives are no longer prostrate in defeat. Quite the contrary: Their blood is up, stirred by both the actions and the troubles of the Obama administration.

Movement conservatives are also buoyed by signs of shifting political attitudes in the larger body politic. Polling results have trended to the right since mid-2009, and Republican Scott Brown's capture of the seat of Teddy Kennedy in Massachusetts is just the latest sign that 2010 election results will follow.

That is why the CPAC meeting here this week will find itself far from the voice crying in the wilderness it was a year ago (when the Obama birth certificate issue was among the salient matters discussed).

This year, in fact, the main burden for CPAC is not the setback of a devastating election, but the onset of a challenge from a new player in the world of conservative activism -- the Tea Party -- which held one of its first gatherings under the TEA (Taxed Enough Already) banner during last year's CPAC.

Today the Tea Partiers remain a nascent and amorphous band of anti-tax and anti-government activists. But they are also the media darlings of the new decade, and their recent meeting in Nashville, Tenn., starring Sarah Palin, set the bar a bit higher for this year's CPAC show.

That being said, CPAC's annual return to the capital still resonates as a rite of early spring. It recalls glory days from the heyday of Ronald Reagan and signifies a certain continuity for conservatism over generations.

Deja Vu?

It is also a reminder that the pendulum swings in our politics are highly regular. If those on the right are standing up to Washington right now, it is less a Second Revolution, as some Tea Partiers suggest, than it is a confirmation of a consistent pattern.

For a half-century, we have seen the same left-right dynamic play out. Multiterm Republican administrations give way to younger, less well-known Democrats promising change. It has happened four times at precise intervals of 16 years. And each time, the new Democratic president has met a wall of resistance and conservative resurgence as soon as he tried to deliver on his ideas of change.

Start with John F. Kennedy in 1960. Long before Obama broke the race barrier, Kennedy sent a shock through the body politic as the youngest president ever elected and the first Catholic. He said he would "get the country moving again," and his ascent met resistance not only from business interests but from active anti-communists and traditionalists of various kinds.

Kennedy tried to go slow on civil rights but had his hand forced in 1963 by violent resistance to that movement. He agonized over the commitment to Vietnam but feared scaling it back in the face of conservatives eager for the fight. Among these was Arizona Republican Barry Goldwater, who emerged from the Western conservative wing of the GOP to pull the party rightward. His new thrust helped Richard Nixon win the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972.

The next new Democratic face was Jimmy Carter, lifted to the White House in 1976 by Watergate and the disgrace of Nixon. Carter carried the South and considered himself a son of the soil. But when Carter came to office, the populist right came to life. Much of its ire in that era was prompted by the Panama Canal treaty, by desegregation of schools and by outrage over inflation-fueled increases in tax rates. But it all came down on Carter, and when interest rates spiked and recession followed, the election of Ronald Reagan happened.

Sixteen years after Carter's election came the young Bill Clinton, another Southern governor who fancied himself a voice of the people. His nominating convention dwelt heavily on the themes of change and "a town called Hope." In the White House, he took on the ban on gays in the military, gas taxes, gun laws and, most ambitiously, health care. His support in his home region went, well, south. Two years into his presidency, Republicans captured a majority of House seats, Senate seats and governorships in the South for the first time since Reconstruction. (They have held all three ever since.)

And, yes, it was exactly 16 years from Clinton's 1992 breakthrough to the 2008 election of President Obama, yet another young Democrat borne on promises of change and hope. This time, many Democrats believed, they had the wind at their back for keeps. They had the youth and the minority voters and a lock on tomorrow.

It may be that future elections bear this out. But for the moment, the realities of the present are reminding us of a dynamic we have seen repeatedly in the past.

One year ago, a lot of people thought Barack Obama had changed the fundaments of American politics. To hear all the transformation talk, you would think the war between left and right was over, or at least reduced to a mopping-up operation.

So far at least, it hasn't worked out that way. Conservatives are back, with a vengeance.

Yes, this new president did something amazing. He won with more of the popular vote than any Democrat in 44 years. He redefined the upside potential of public service for African Americans. And he helped carry into Congress the biggest Democratic majorities in 30 years.

But he didn't end the political war. No election ever does. Even watershed elections with lopsided results do not. They often signal an upsurge for the minority that comes sooner than anyone would have expected.

The litter from the National Mall on Inauguration Day 2009 was still in recycling when the pushback from the right began in earnest. Protests sprang up around the country, especially organized around Tax Day (April 15) by elements of what would come to be called the Tea Party. Those Republicans who initially tried to work with the new president on a big economic stimulus package -- including a few senators and governors -- were pilloried and punished.

Next came a summer of discontent in which rising unemployment fears were compounded by anxiety about larger government and health care changes. The president's approval rating slid to the low 50s. Town hall meetings in August became hothouses of populist ire, both spontaneous and orchestrated, and the new Congress felt the heat.

In the fall, the health care bill was hamstrung and held hostage in the Senate, along with all the other major initiatives of the administration. Republicans captured the governorship in New Jersey and Virginia. In January, they also took away the late Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat in Massachusetts.

The Democrats' temporary hold on 60 votes in the Senate, the threshold for ending filibusters, was gone. The Massachusetts result was widely seen as a harbinger for big GOP gains in the 2010 midterms, and the retirement of Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh is just one more sign of that trend.

Should we be shocked at this fickle reversal of fortune? Hardly.

It is worth remembering that nearly half the country voted against Barack Obama in November 2008, and since then very few of those who did have been won over to his side. Meanwhile, inevitably, some of those who did vote for the Democrat have had second thoughts.

Some have concluded he's not the bipartisan breath of fresh air they had hoped he was. They think he's too liberal. Others say no, he's not nearly liberal enough. The wars continue in Iraq and Afghanistan, bonuses are still paid on Wall Street and prisoners remain at Guantanamo Bay. What happened to change we could believe in?

And that's not to mention health care, the crux of the Obama presidency to date. It's the issue on which liberals have been most disappointed ("there is no real reform without a public option for health insurance") and conservatives most incensed ("it's a total government takeover of health care").

Attempts at compromise often wind up producing something no one really likes. Think of a couple with a new hybrid car: The guy really wants more horsepower and his eco-conscious wife hates the fact that the car still uses gasoline.

The salient features of the health care overhaul still enjoy widespread public support, including the "individual mandate" requirement that everyone should get insurance so that no one need be denied it. People understand the concept and support the basic tradeoffs in the bill.

But when you ask about "Obama care" or the "health bills being considered in Congress," the policy image goes south in a hurry. The combined weight of misconceptions (think "death panels"), the rank partisanship and the dealmaking on the side have besmirched the basic plan beyond recognition.

In other words, far from ending the left-right war, the Obama White House has been caught in its classic crossfire. Now it finds itself paralyzed by the age-old dilemma: Whom to please?

It's fine to say "please the people." Everyone nods for this nostrum. But who are the people? Most folks will tell you THEY are the people. Them, and people like them. And they will tell you people like them are fed up, sick and tired, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

The notion that some other group of people is getting a better deal -- be they bankers, lawyers, insurance companies, public employees, union workers, black people, white people or brown people -- is both widespread and deeply felt. Victimhood is close to the core of human nature. And when jobs are scarcer than they have been since the Depression, this perennial conviction feeds on the desperation of the times.

Navigating these waters is not for the faint-hearted. Nor is it a simple matter of purpose and perseverance. Choices must be made with no guarantee that even the right choice will produce the right result.

The Obama team proved itself capable against all odds in 2008, denying Hillary Clinton the nomination everyone assumed was hers and then defeating the Republicans' best bipartisan candidate -- the one with the least taint of George W. Bush.

Since then, they have encountered what all wunderkind campaign teams must -- the vast difference between moving voters before an election and moving mountains thereafter.

Americans owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Shelby, and 99 other U.S. senators should be furious at him.

Late last week, the senior Republican from Alabama placed a blanket hold on 70 nominations pending before the Senate. He was not objecting to their qualifications or personal profiles, or even discussing them.

His problem had to do with a couple of government contracts he wants to see benefit his home state. The contracts have not been resolved in the direction the senator prefers, and he felt he was getting stiffed.

Of course, once he had made a few headlines with his shotgun-hold tactic, he was willing to let most of his hostages loose. Now he's just holding a handful of appointments he sees as relevant to his home-state focus.

But the damage just may have been done.

People who watch the Senate regularly know that holds are as common as colds. Senators use them to pressure the administration on any number of matters, from nuclear policy to petty personnel squabbles.

Most of the time, only hardcore Hill mavens notice. But with his one act of singular senatorial arrogance, Shelby overstepped the usual bounds of caution. This time, the shenanigans went viral, and more than a few people were alarmed.

That's why the rest of the Senate should be short of breath over this. Because if Shelby gets noticed with this extreme version of business as usual, other senators conducting similar hijackings on a smaller scale may get noticed, too.

What is this mysterious power to place a hold on appointments and bills? How is it that one senator could delay or even cancel the filling of these jobs?

The hold is simply a senator's way of notifying the majority leader that he or she intends to use the right to extended debate against that name or bill. It is an implicit threat to filibuster, in a time when such threats are as effective as filibusters themselves ever were.

The holding senator may have an issue pertaining to the nominee or the bill at hand. Or there may be something else on the senator's mind.

In this case, Shelby's communications director said, the issue was the coddling of terrorists. He then explained that the Obama administration had yet to resolve a certain contract for the building of tanker planes to refuel U.S. warplanes in midflight, a years-long battle between two defense consortia on opposite sides of the Atlantic.

And the Obama administration has not yet let a contract for a lab that will analyze forensic evidence from bomb-making materials found in Iraq and Afghanistan. The communication from the senator's office suggested this shows a lack of commitment to anti-terrorism.

It neglected to mention that both these contracts involve, or might involve, large business interests in the state of Alabama.

This is what some call constituent service. Others call it earmarking, the practice of steering specific outlays in spending bills to benefit preselected parties. Still others call this plain and simple pork barrel politics, the pursuit of government largess benefiting one's friends and constituents and campaign supporters.

Shelby was exercising his right to shut the appointment process down because he did not get what he wanted in the most recent round of appropriations for the Department of Defense.

So why should Americans be grateful?

They should be grateful to the senator for being so bold as to be blatant, so outspoken as to be outrageous. Most of his colleagues would be more subtle about manipulating Senate rules, so as to keep this ability down below the radar of the media and the voting public.

A blanket hold on 70 nominees ought to be embarrassing to senators such as John McCain, senior Republican from Arizona, who ran for president twice emphasizing his detestation of earmarks. How can McCain, and others like him, defend the Shelby-style brandishing of the hold-filibuster to protect earmarking?

That's a debate the Republican minority ought to be having in its conference meetings, where it contemplates how to use its filibuster power now that it has 41 votes to make it stick.

But Democrats need to look in the mirror. One big reason the majority party has not been able to act like one in the Senate is its unwillingness to tackle the customs and traditions that make every senator a king or queen. Every senator has an interest in preserving that kind of individual power.

But what about the public interest, or the national interest? Do these privileges serve the rest of us?

If one senator can hold sway over so much of the nation's business simply by declaring himself willing to be unreasonable, then reasonable people have cause to re-examine the institution of the Senate itself.

President Obama met with Senate Democrats Wednesday to map strategy. But with cameras in the room, the working session quickly deteriorated into a series of individual senatorial commentaries in the guise of questions -- bids for TV news time back in their home states.

What was to have been a meaningful exchange began to look like a typical Senate day on C-SPAN. And, no surprise, the first in line for the mike were the incumbents facing the iffiest re-election prospects this year.

With the world of work Senate Democrats still have to tackle this year, nothing seems more important to Majority Leader Harry Reid and his cohort than their campaigns. The priorities, privileges and political survival of the individual senator remain the principal focus of the United States Senate. Nothing competes with the needs of the senators themselves.

This is not just a matter of vanity; it goes to the basic problem that makes the Senate a dam in the governing stream. The primacy of the individual senator is what hobbles Congress on a regular basis. And that primacy's most effective tool is the threat of a filibuster.

The real filibuster was once the nuclear weapon of Senate procedure. Senators had the right, but regarded it as an extreme form of behavior (see Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington). It was reserved for big issues that at least a substantial portion of the Senate regarded as existential.

Nowadays, the nuclear weapon has become a kind of sidearm. Every senator wears it on one hip, like a cowboy's six-gun in a Western saloon.

So what changed?

Going Nuclear

Let's step back a bit. From the Constitution forward, the Senate has been a highly privileged organ that made its own rules and tended to operate independently of the few it made. Custom and courtesy, member to member, have been the essence of the process.

That broke down in 1917, when isolationist senators filibustered a bill to arm merchant ships crossing the Atlantic in the months before the U.S. entered World War I. Incensed, President Woodrow Wilson demanded that the Senate find some way to limit debate. The Senate adopted Rule 22, providing for a cutoff of debate when two-thirds of the Senate agreed to it (the same vote needed to change the rules).

For half a century thereafter, the filibuster was primarily the last resort of Southern senators fighting bills they saw as hostile to their region, especially anti-segregation bills. In these times, the filibustering minority would talk round the clock, while members on both sides kept watch and slept on cots. But such dramas came to an end in 1964, when a months-long filibuster was broken by a coalition of Republicans and non-Southern Democrats to enact the landmark Civil Rights Act.

A decade later, the Senate mustered another two-thirds majority to change the rule itself, lowering the vote required for cloture from 67 to 60. It was meant to be a progressive reform but had unintended consequences.

Now Everyone Is Armed

When filibustering was nearly impossible to stop, its use for small matters was all but unthinkable. When it became easier to invoke cloture, the filibuster itself became more commonplace. In the mid-'80s, Sen. Al D'Amato (R-NY) held the floor for hours one night in defense of one military contractor with plants in his state.

Such petty filibusters were a way to get attention or to leverage a better deal from a committee chairman. If enough senators were willing to join in, even temporarily, party leaders might decide against bringing a particular bill to the floor.

It became standard operating procedure for majority leaders to seek cloture before taking up any bill of importance or any business involving controversy. If there were not 60 votes for cloture, consideration of that item would simply stop.

This evolved into the predicament of the Senate today. The mere threat of a filibuster is now as effective as a real one.

So Why Not Force A Filibuster?

Why won't Reid and other leaders force the minority to get out the cots and do it for real?

They consider the time to be lost; the loss of dignity, the ceding of control for weeks at a time the ultimate political risk. Which side will the public be on? Who will come out ahead after the ordeal is over? And even if the majority eventually breaks one filibuster, won't it have to go through it all again on the next big issue?

These hazards have weighed heavily on risk-averse majority leaders in both parties. Beyond these concerns, there is the sheer habit of the Senate and its leaders: obeisance to the needs of individual members. Given the uncertainties and ugliness of a endless filibuster, no one wants to go there.

But ultimately, the legislative history of the first two years of the Obama presidency will be determined not by the House, which has already passed the essentials of the Obama program, but by the Senate. And the Senate has done only the economic stimulus package, which it accomplished with Republican crossovers.

Once the Democrats picked up two more seats in mid-2009, they shifted to seeking 60 votes without any Republicans. That hardened the Republican bloc to perfection, leaving Reid at the mercy of each individual freelancer in his own ranks. The cult of the individual senator had a field day, and the deal-making that followed made the bill toxic to much of the public and unacceptable to the House.

The 60-vote strategy proved not only unproductive, but counterproductive. It proved to be a mirage. And with the loss of the Massachusetts Senate seat to Republican Scott Brown, it is now a memory.

That leaves the Democrats two choices: Convert at least one Republican (or at least one on each issue) or call the Republicans' bluff on the threat of a filibuster. Make them do it for real, and you will see where the public stands on the question of majority rule.

If you tuned in at certain points in President Obama's State of the Union address last night, you might have seen and heard a chastened chief executive sounding downbeat.

It was clearly an impression the president wanted to convey, within limits.

Nearing the end of his 70-minute address, the president spoke of "so much cynicism out there ... so much disappointment."

A moment later he added: "I campaigned on the promise of change -- change we can believe in, the slogan went. Right now, I know, there are many Americans who aren't sure if they still believe we can change -- or at least that I can deliver it."

That's pretty much telling it like it is. Independents have begun to wonder what they saw in the slender freshman senator from Illinois. Hard-core liberals, union activists and Democratic partisans have questioned whether their champion had the stomach for the fight.

Addressing the misgivings of the former group was sure to add to those of the latter.

One year into his improbable presidency, Obama seemed to acknowledge all that as he stood, cool and loose, before a House chamber filled with politicians who seemed far less relaxed. The Democrats looked sour much of the time, even while applauding. The Republicans seemed to be attending under duress, their Senate leader, Mitch McConnell so impassive as to appear embalmed.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff sat in uniform, following their usual code of stony passivity. They did not applaud even when the commander in chief was praising the military. Nearby, most of the Supreme Court sat enrobed in their own uniform, implacable in their own way (except for Samuel Alito, who could be seen shaking his head and mouthing "That's not right" when the president criticized their decision to allow direct corporate spending on campaigns).

The president himself was by turns defiant and self-deprecating. And as he neared his conclusion, he seemed almost to be reaching for a kind of bottom, a low point from which he his party might rebound after three months of almost unbroken bad news.

"I never suggested that change would be easy, or that I can do it alone," the president said.

No, but much of the nation seemed to believe a year ago that change was coming -- big change -- and the new president was going to be able to make it happen. It was change that some embraced and others feared and loathed. But things were going to be different. More different than they have turned out to be.

But moments after bringing the room down, the president was building to a conclusion with an entirely different tone.

"We have finished a difficult year," he said, sliding into the cadence of the pulpit. "We have come through a difficult decade. But a new year has come. A new decade stretches before us. We don't quit. I don't quit. Let's seize this moment to start anew, to carry the dream forward and to strengthen our union once more."

It was another of his signature finishes, emotional and full of confidence. And it allowed the president to leave the joint session on a high note, clutching the hands of well-wishers and smiling on his way out the door.

The president gave a long speech, most of which had clearly been amassed well before the recent reversal of fortune in Massachusetts that cost the Democrats their 60-vote majority in the Senate. Historians will debate whether the months of 60 votes, a majority big enough to defeat a filibuster, were a blessing for the Democrats or a curse.

One thing is clear: It was when the majority reached 60 that the minority stopped negotiating, hunkered down and began opposing everything of significance, forcing the majority to assemble its full 60 on a routine basis. It proved more than the party could do without making ugly and highly visible deals. The very strength of the majority became a perfect foil for Republicans everywhere, including candidates for Congress in 2010.

When running for president in 2008, Obama could run against the presidency of George W. Bush, the prospect of Hillary Clinton, the Republican Party, the war in Iraq, the recession and the Wall Street meltdown. But after a year in office, he and his own party have become the party of power and therefore the party of the nation's problems. They own the wars and the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, the recession and the unemployed. They own the deficit, even if most of it was in the pipeline before Obama took the oath of office.

That is the way perception works in politics, and it has nothing to do with fairness.

So last night, Obama tried to recover some of the foils he ran against two years ago. He pointed again to all the ills he inherited. He may be right, but this argument loses force with every passing month. Once again, that is how perception works.

And so the president tried to establish a new benchmark as of this State of the Union speech. If he can fix this point in the national imagination as a low point, he might be able to portray it later as a turning point.

If so, the tough talk and soul-searching of last night could be a backdrop for better days ahead. Realism could be for Obama's next act what hope was for his last.

Only one president will stand before the joint session of Congress in the House chamber tonight, and his teleprompters will all carry the same text. But in a real sense the orator in chief will be giving two speeches rather than one.

That's because elements of his audience, both in the chamber and beyond, are listening to hear two different and even contradictory messages. Each element is waiting with some anxiety and even anger, and neither will be easily mollified if the president disappoints.

Consider these two distinct sets of ears and expectations. The first and probably larger group consists of independent voters who took Candidate Obama seriously in 2008 when he said he wanted to change the way Washington works. He convinced these voters, who partly convinced themselves, that he would be immersed in the mainstream. His administration would be bipartisan, cooperative and oriented toward the pragmatic.

This was meant to contrast with the politics of the previous administration, which had thrived in its heyday by stressing divisive issues such as war, abortion and gay marriage.

Having signed on for change, polls show, such voters are now unhappy to find the two parties more estranged and at cross purposes than at any time since World War II (with the possible exception of the year the Republican House impeached President Bill Clinton).

Many of these voters may find fault with the minority Republicans, too. Still, their objection to the Obama presidency to date has to do with method and process. These independents are disillusioned that the new president would allow the Democratic leaders in Congress to write bills with little or no Republican input. They are further dispirited by the sight of individual Democrats (especially in the Senate) cutting separate deals to deliver their votes for the president's program -- on health care and elsewhere.

Let's face it. People know more about what Sen. Ben Nelson got into the health care bill for Nebraska than they know about the guts of the bill itself and its potential benefits for the country as a whole.

One can readily imagine drafting a speech that would appeal to this group. It would mention Republican presidents with respect and even admiration. It would resonate with national themes that oblige those in the chamber to rise and applaud, on either side of the aisle. It would offer the president's hand in cooperation for the sake of the common good.

Specifically, President Obama might reach out to the coalition of private interests that once backed the comprehensive health legislation: health insurers and care providers, hospitals and medical professionals, champions of business and seniors. Now is the time to enlist these inside players to help in recruiting Republicans. And yes, Republicans will be needed, at least in the Senate, if the legislation is to survive the loss of the Democrats' 60th vote in last week's Massachusetts special election.

Such a gesture will not move many committed conservatives. But that is not the goal. The idea is to bring back some of those independents who backed the Obama bid in 2008 and whose defection is costing the president and his party so dearly in the polls and at the polls (see Massachusetts above, and the gubernatorial contests last November in New Jersey and Virginia).

Easy as it is to imagine such a rhetorical thrust, the president cannot afford to give this speech and leave it at that. He must remember the importance of that other audience that is waiting to hear something completely different.

For if independents feel let down by Obama's partisan tilt there are millions of liberals feeling betrayed by his apparent capitulation to centrism. For these listeners, many of them seething with resentment, there must be a countermessage of confrontation.

Here again, it is not hard to sketch the outlines of such a message. It could be built around a barn-burning and roof-raising bid to the populists of the left who want Wall Street in the pillory and higher taxes on the rich. The president has been handed a ready-made issue in this regard by the investment banks' insistence on restoring the hyperbolic bonus culture and returning to risk-taking to restore profitability. The president can talk about these excesses, talk about clawing back the bailout billions and demand greater lending to small business and the little guy.

The president has already acknowledged that the populist energy he rode into office has shifted to those who would ride him out of office tomorrow if they could. Tonight he has a chance to speak to that energy and throw the switch back the other way. He cannot afford to lose that chance, as he might not get another as good before November.

By some measures, President Obama has had a higher success score in Congress than any president since World War II. But any metric of success seems meaningless when the biggest of the big-ticket items remain mired in the process: the overhauling of health care and health insurance, the tightening of regulation on the financial industry, and the climate change and energy bill often summarized by one feature, the "cap and trade" method of incentivizing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Much might be forgiven if the recession and unemployment had been brought to heel. Bottom line, the average American is either worried about losing a job or knows someone who is. When that kind of fear is abroad in the land, many other kinds of ills and unease radiate from it.

After one year in office, President Obama and his congressional majorities stand accused of failing their own most active partisans and also of failing those who had hoped for an end to partisanship. It has been possible to disappoint both camps at once, and now the president must aspire to rapprochement with both at once. If only he could give two speeches at once.