I offered my take earlier today.

Ann Althouse seems to agree — with Brooks, me, and others — that Obama is more of a pragmatist than Pelosi’s Congress,* but he needs to stand up and prove it.

… I cling to the belief that Obama has the ability to save us from the destructive path Congress has chosen for itself. But will he use it?

How much of an ideologue is he anyway? We’ve come this far, and still we don’t really know. Is he, at heart, the committed leftist his staunchest opponents say he is? I know Rush Limbaugh is fond of saying — over and over — that Obama is intentionally destroying the economy (so that nothing will be left for us but socialism).

I still think Obama is a pragmatist. I also think he’s mainly interested in attaining personal glory. If that’s right, the prospect of his own defeat in 2012 should shock him into standing up to the bunch of Democrats who — I hope and I hope he sees — will be crushed in 2010.

So: hope and change. Come on, Obama. We need some now.

Of course, not everyone sees it that way. Count Susan Duclos among the contrarians:

Yes, liberals are on a suicide march as all the most recent polls show, their numbers are in a free fall, Obama’s agenda, specifically the economic proposals and healthcare have lost support at an amazing rate, but people like David Brooks are still refusing to acknowledge that the suicide march is being led by Barack Obama.

Matthew Yglesias tacks the other way:

… I think the general phenomenon of “overreach” — and especially of “liberal overreach” — is wildly overblown. It’s not as if what happened in 1994 was the congress passed Bill Clinton’s big health reform package, then the public didn’t like it, then in revulsion they turned against Democrats. Nor did congress pass the proposed BTU tax, then the public didn’t like it, and then in revulsion they turned against Democrats. The noteworthy thing about the first two years of the Clinton administration was the lack of ambitious progressive programs put in place. And you could say the same about Jimmy Carter. Whatever it is people reacted against in 1978, 1980, and 1994 it wasn’t actually existing left-wing governance.

Unless, of course, you count the “existing left-wing governance” inherited from President Johnson and his compliant Congress, the costs of which we’re still struggling with today. And I write that as someone who actually applauds the worthy goals of much of the “Great Society” agenda.

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* In using the term “Pelosi’s Congress,” I’m not forgetting Mr. Reid and the Senate, only suggesting that Madame Speaker seems, in many ways, to be the stronger overall policy influence. And yes, that’s one man’s off-the-cuff perception, subject to legitimate dispute.