Obama Second-Term Agenda: Everything, All at Once

President Barack Obama begins his second term today with room to breathe. The global financial system is not failing, the U.S. housing market is not collapsing, and American jobs are not evaporating. Meanwhile, after a convincing win in November, his approval rating is robust, and the federal government’s fiscal condition is fitfully, contentiously improving.

Yet any notion that Obama might use his second term merely to consolidate the shaky gains of his first, particularly the complex implementation of his landmark health-care law, was obliterated last week when the president announced his agenda for addressing gun violence. Although Obama’s time in office is now fixed, his ambition is not similarly bounded.