Obama has already failed. Or at least, a not-insignificant Democratic constituency believes he has begun to let us down by taking less-than-principled positions on FISA telecom immunity, campaign finance, and the death penalty.

This cuts two or three ways. Obviously, Obama is doing what he believes is necessary to win, and that involves some compromises around the margins of his agenda. Is this OK? Probably. Also, he’s getting some awkward reversals out of the way early, when few voters are paying attention. But the real problem here may not be opportunism and/or a Clinton-type strategy to move to the center, but caution. Obama seems to be planning for a landslide; he is allocating resources for a 50-state strategy, planning a trip to the Middle East – and Europe, where he will greeted as a rock star - playing around with redesigning the presidential seal, and not advertising much in swing states. The imagery is of a man who has, in some sense, feels he already has the job. This is dangerous – nobody likes presumptuousness in a presidential candidate who remains mostly an unknown. But the real problem is that Obama’s current round of maneuvers seems so generic, and disengaged from the issue landscape – basically, he has not been addressing the palpable sense out there that everything is going to hell.

Every minute that Obama is above the fray, cleverly insulating himself against GOP attacks, is a minute he is not in the trenches, addressing the big issues of the day and what he’s going to do about them. Or at least, so it seems. It ought to be possible to do both.