But on the issues voters care most about — the economy, jobs and spending — Obama has shown himself to be a big-government liberal. This reality is killing him with independent-minded voters — a trend that started one year ago and has gotten much worse of late. On the eve of his inaugural address, nearly six in 10 independents approved of his job performance. By late July of 2009 — right around the time Obama was talking up health care and pressuring Democrats to vote on cap-and-trade legislation — independents started to take flight.

Many never returned. For the first time in his presidency, Obama’s approval among independents dropped below 40 percent in the past two weeks, according to the widely respected Gallup surveys.

A recent poll by Democrat Stan Greenberg’s Democracy Corps found that 57 percent of likely voters regard Obama as “too liberal.”

“The key thing here is the economy and the unemployment rate hangs over everything,” another top White House official told us. “Until that gets better, for most people, they will be frustrated.”

The ideology conundrum 

Even as Obama pays the price for liberal positions, he doesn't manage to reap what should be the rewards. That's because he has never adequately reckoned with the divisions in his own party and taken a clear stand of his own. During the campaign, he avoided the whole question of whether he is centrist “new Democrat” or a “traditional liberal” by insisting the debate was irrelevant, and uniting the party around Bush hatred and the power of his own biography.

But on a score of questions — how long to pursue war in Afghanistan, how much to emphasize deficit reduction versus stimulus, whether to court the business community or condemn it — the Democrats’ internal debate is relevant. By failing to clarify and speak often about his larger philosophy, in the way that Bill Clinton often did, and instead responding tactically to circumstances on Capitol Hill or in any day’s news cycle, Obama pays a price.

What is Obamaism? Conservatives think he stands for backdoor socialism. Liberals think he is a sell-out. Independents think he is a president with no clear compass who is breaking the bank with excessive spending.

Every move Obama makes, whether he is accommodating the center or the left, is interpreted through the prism of process and derided as reactive and expedient.

The tactical improvisation leaves even many Obama supporters saying they “don’t know what he really stands for” — as though there could somehow be a mystery as to where he stands after nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus spending and two landmark pieces of legislation passed within 18 months.

The likability factor

Many Democrats on the Hill don’t much like Obama, or at least his circle of advisers. They think the White House makes them take tough votes, but doesn’t care that much about the problems those votes leave politicians facing in tough races in 2010. Numerous Democrats have complained privately that Obama only cares about Obama — a view reinforced by Gibbs’s public admission that Democrats could lose the House.