The resistance to progress on America's three primary issues at this point -- two hard-to-end, pointless wars; a financial system with its fangs sunk into the nation's neck; and a beggar-thy-neighbor health-care system -- present two depressing alternative interpretations as one looks for solutions.

The first is to blame the whole thing on President Barack Obama: He has overloaded himself in trying to fix the economy, end two wars, modernize our health-care system, reform education, deal with global warming and improve America's situation in the world in general, all at the same time. He promised too much to a weary nation during his campaign. He's great at whipping around the country and making speeches, but not so great at bringing a winner home as the turf gets rough and the horse begins to flag.

The second interpretation, which I prefer since I don't like giving up on important matters, is that the institutional forces Mr. Obama has tackled are stubborn, selfish, have a lot of money to throw around and have in the form of the U.S. Congress an audience many of whom are greedy and thoroughly venal.

Besides, there is nothing to do about Mr. Obama now except hack at him until the next presidential campaign. Hacking at him reduces his chances of resolving some of the problems that the American people subscribed to in voting for him in November 2008 and so is largely pointless.

It is also the case that -- even looking ahead to a presidential campaign that threatens to start at any dismal moment -- neither party appears to have anyone to offer who would be anything like an acceptable alternative to Mr. Obama. Maybe -- maybe -- someone will emerge, but as of now the choice is between tired, broken down, crooked members of Congress and governors and the shabby Newt Gingriches of this world.

So let's look at what Mr. Obama is fighting -- or appears to be fighting -- in trying to achieve what I consider to be his meritorious agenda.

On the wars, he is fighting a fat and sassy defense industry as well as a professional military. The defense contractors and the generals have done extraordinarily well out of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. One doesn't see the defense contractors much. One does see the retired generals, now working for defense contractors or Washington think tanks, on television.

Even though the money that America now spends on the military needs to be cut, these two groups can be mollified and called off to a degree by the suggestion that some of what the country now spends to fight wars can be spent instead on refitting our military, fixing or replacing the equipment which hasn't survived Iraq's desert sands or Afghanistan's inhospitable mountains well, and, most importantly, putting our brave men and women back in fighting shape. Little attention has been paid yet to the physical and psychological damage to them exacted by a six-year-old war in Iraq and an eight-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The second group that is fighting Mr. Obama tooth and fang is the medical industry. For some odd reason -- probably it's something gooey like Hypocratic oaths and old fictional media portrayals of Dr. Christian, Hawkeye Pierce, Marcus Welby and the like -- Americans find it hard to imagine that some members of their medical industry will do and say anything for money. The insurance companies were flushed out last week and went after the still-living "public option" with hitherto unrevealed naked savagery, although I have to say I sniffed at what they did with suspicion in terms of overall Obama administration political tactics. Are they perhaps masking an impending sell-out, for example?

The third machine that Mr. Obama is beginning to confront is the American financial industry, which is resisting regulation and reform. It doesn't have the guns that the defense and medical industries have in terms of the ability to a) scare Americans and appeal to their patriotism, or b) scare Americans by pitching to their fear of illness and death, as they try to hold onto their piece of the action. The "action" is, of course, a disproportionately hefty, growing chunk of the taxpayers' and consumers' money.

But the people at the banks and financial houses were given a mighty piece of artillery in waging legislative and other wars by the administration of President George W. Bush, which designated the fattest of them "too big to fail," a designation which the Obama administration has been quiet about but which it has reaffirmed by its actions.

Witness, for example, the weeping and wailing that accompanies the continuing commemoration of the anniversary of the "tragic" failure of Lehman Brothers. "Oh, if we hadn't saved the rest of them, what would the country's and the world's economy have come to?" Lubricious nonsense.

Instead, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and most of the others have drawn correctly the lessons of the government bailout: Take expensive but highly profitable risks; threaten to fail; wail woefully; get a massive bailout engineered by ex-executives of your firms scattered strategically in government; raise your head cautiously; then recommence taking big, expensive risks, secure in the assurance that the taxpayers will save you if things go wrong again. What other lesson would a smart financier draw from what occurred?

On these three problems -- ending the two wars and refitting our military, coming out of the fray with real health-care reform and regulating America's financial institutions so they can't ruin us again -- Mr. Obama has to get up on the bull, put in a quarter and ride.

He still has the public's support. In spite of what the moron congressman from South Carolina said, the American people continue to believe what the president says, especially when he says, "Yes, we can." He is approaching the watershed point of becoming a great president or just more of the same. Tell us, are we looking at James Buchanan or Abraham Lincoln? Your move, Mr. Obama.

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