Pete, the White House spinners certainly won’t like David Brooks writing the obituary for their agenda:

We’re only in the early stages of the liberal suicide march, but there already have been three phases. First, there was the stimulus package. You would have thought that a stimulus package would be designed to fight unemployment and stimulate the economy during a recession. But Congressional Democrats used it as a pretext to pay for $787 billion worth of pet programs with borrowed money. Only 11 percent of the money will be spent by the end of the fiscal year — a triumph of ideology over pragmatism.

Then there is the budget. Instead of allaying moderate anxieties about the deficits, the budget is expected to increase the government debt by $11 trillion between 2009 and 2019.

Finally, there is health care. Every cliché Ann Coulter throws at the Democrats is gloriously fulfilled by the Democratic health care bills. The bills do almost nothing to control health care inflation. They are modeled on the Massachusetts health reform law that is currently coming apart at the seams precisely because it doesn’t control costs. They do little to reward efficient providers and reform inefficient ones.

He’s noticed that Nancy Pelosi is less popular than Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin. But most of all, he’s miffed at the moderate presidential candidate who’s turned out to be a not-in-the-least-moderate president. Brooks thinks Obama’s problem is deferring to Congressional liberals too much. That might be right. But there may be something else going on here.

It is worth asking: Is Obama really that weak and passive? Maybe Obama likes what Congress is turning out. Goodness knows he praised the stimulus plan, cheered the passage of cap-and-trade, sent his budget up to the Hill and encouraged the House Democrats’ public option health-care plan. In what sense is this “deferring,” if the House liberals deliver precisely what he wants?

Brooks hopes the Blue Dogs will save Obama and Pelosi from themselves, but is wary: “And so here we are again. Every new majority overinterprets its mandate. We’ve been here before. We’ll be here again.”

In reality, his is an argument for divided government. Just as Bill Clinton needed a Republican Congress to save his presidency, Obama may need the same. We can argue as to who is leading whom, but Brooks is right: the combination of Pelosi, Reid, and Obama has proved a disastrous one. If they can’t contain and restrain themselves, the voters will rearrange the players in 2010 and make sure that mandate can no longer be “overinterpreted.”