But on Wednesday, in his third primetime press conference, Obama moved beyond the defense of his actions to a confession of sorts. Doing so much at once, it turns out, is actually quite a chore. "The typical president, I think, has two or three big problems," he said, just hours after a flu pandemic was declared "imminent" by the World Health Organization. "We've got seven or eight big problems."

He went on. "I don't want to run auto companies, I don't want to run banks. I've got two wars I've got to run already. I've got more than enough to do," he said. "So the sooner we can get out of that business, the better off we're going to be."

A few minutes later, in response to another question, Obama returned to the same theme. "If you could tell me right now that, when I walked into this office that the banks were humming," he said, "that autos were selling, and that all you had to worry about was Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, getting health care passed, figuring out how to deal with energy independence, deal with Iran, and a pandemic flu, I would take that deal