“God bless him, bless his heart, president of the United States—a total failure, losing all credibility with the American people on the economy, on the war, on energy, you name the subject.” That was Nancy Pelosi’s assessment of George W. Bush last July.

A little harsh, if you ask me. It’s not like Bush burned through a near trillion dollars in a stillborn stimulus, scolded America while the economy pitched, tried to close the country’s most important maximum-security facility without a plan, alienated allies from England to Israel, emboldened the world’s bad actors from Hugo Chavez to the Burmese junta, repeatedly trashed his predecessor around the globe, heralded America’s indifference to human-rights abuses, insulted police in a botched attempt to reignite a fading grievance culture, and frittered away the dregs of his political capital on a socialist health-care hodgepodge that neither he nor any other American could explain, let alone embrace.

Nope, accomplishing all that—and doing so between Valentine’s Day and Labor Day—takes a visionary, a new Lincoln, a “sort of God,” as a sort of apostle from Newsweek put it.

It turns out there is nothing too big to fail, including the grand plans of Barack Obama. Rep. Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) acknowledged as much yesterday in regard to the health-care meltdown. Faced with enraged Americans at town-hall meetings, Boyd threw in the towel, saying he would “be willing to scrap everything” and start from square one. First health care; next—you name it. The whole Obama horizon is ready for a reset.

Forget domestic policy, look abroad: As Robert Kagan generously put it in April, “[President Obama’s] policy toward Iran makes sense, so long as he is ready with a serious Plan B if the negotiating track with Tehran fails.” In September, “if” becomes “when.” That’s the month the administration picked as the deadline for Iran to show good faith and discuss its nuclear ambitions. The open-hand approach to autocrats may be a nifty idea in university classrooms, but in reality it has given Tehran room to boost global economic ties, build weapons, enrich uranium, and claim the U.S. as a silent accomplice in the regime’s human-rights abuses. The open hand has also failed in Burma, where talk of eased American sanctions was met with a nuclear partnership with North Korea, as well as in North Korea itself—which has ratcheted up missile launches and nuclear tests in response to Hillary Clinton’s imitation of Condoleezza Rice.

The president also has egg on his face over his delusional Middle East tack. Touting the Saudi peace initiative from day one, Obama leaned on Benjamin Netanyahu to acknowledge a two-state solution and pressed Israel on the settlement canard. Meanwhile, when the president went back to the Saudis with the fruits of his prodding, they told him to get lost.

At least part of Obama’s problem is that few of his plans are actually “his” or “plans.” The president thought he could close Guantánamo Bay with the flourish of a pen and a few words denouncing the previous administration; the stimulus was a Pelosi-Reid work of magical realism; and the health-care hash was both ill-conceived and intellectually outsourced.

It’s been a strange start for a visionary president. With unprecedented levels of global sympathy and a congress stacked in his favor, Obama attempted to will his worldview into actuality. But he never brought more than his own PR to the big launch. And now he’s suddenly stumped, going tone-deaf, and sinking in the polls. Assessments like this one are often made foolish by history, and I hope this one is as well. For if Obama finds his footing he will have done so by allowing reality, not ego and indiference, to guide policy. That is what he’s done and continues to do (for now) in regard to Iraq and Afghanistan, the two admirable areas of his foreign policy.

And Bush? He did some things wrong; others he did right. Among the latter was keeping America safe for eight years, turning a quagmire into a victory, and executing an economic bailout that actually worked as planned. All of which seem frighteningly high bars to clear these days.