A HEALTH CARE package in the balance; unfinished business on climate change; a precarious economy and deficit; foreign policy setbacks on Iran and North Korea. Six months into his presidency, and with a holiday in Martha's Vineyard beckoning, Barack Obama might have hoped by now to have notched up a big victory or two in his ambitious agenda for change. The reality looks a little different.

As Congress prepares to take its summer break, Obama is facing a mounting pile of seemingly intractable problems that have started to damage his reputation as a post-partisan president and dent his standing in the polls. Some observers have begun to ask whether he has taken on more than he can chew.

An ABC poll found the number disapproving of Obama's health plans has risen to 44 per cent, against 49 per cent approving. A similar slide is visible over his handling of the economy, and his personal approval rating has dropped to 55 per cent from 60 per cent.

Particularly worrying will be the figures for independent voters whom Obama successfully wooed last November. A Gallup poll shows two in three independents now think the administration is pushing for too much government spending. “Was his strategy a mistake?” the Washington Post asked on Sunday of his plan to tackle everything from the outset, calling it “the most ambitious agenda since Lyndon B Johnson's”.

Some observers also wondered whether Obama's uncharacteristic slip-up in his response to the arrest of a black academic, Henry Louis Gates, was a product of the pressure he is under. The president at first chided the police for acting “stupidly” and then said he regretted “ratcheting up” the row.

The storm over Gates's arrest distracted attention from health reforms that are giving Obama his largest political headache. The White House had hoped to force through a package before the summer recess begins on Aug 7, but that has come undone at the hands of Republican opposition and a Democratic majority reluctant to be rushed.

The administration faces having to maintain pressure for reform through the hot days of August, when members of Congress will be back in their constituencies and at the mercy of their most vocal voters. The rump of Republican politicians are delighted. As a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee told Politico website “The president continues to see his popularity slowly come down to earth and the policy grow more unpopular by the day.”

On foreign policy too the administration has hurled itself at multiple complex problems. The White House is engaging vigorously with the Middle East in an attempt to kick-start the peace process and is trying to find a way of holding back Iran's nuclear ambitions while dissuading Israel from taking unilateral action.

The rationale for taking action simultaneously on many fronts is that Obama won 53 per cent of the popular vote in November, awarding him a powerful political mandate. The administration has also been keen to make use of the economic downturn to achieve real change, with the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, famously advising “Never let a serious crisis go to waste.”

But with voters showing signs of growing restlessness, Obama now needs a breakthrough on any one of the many fronts if he is to keep alive his hope of forging one of the great reforming presidencies.

— The Guardian, London