Your basic thesis is correct. This is why Paul Krugman frames many of his Obama critiques with statements like "at this rate, we can expect employment to return to pre-crisis levels some time in the second term of the Sarah Palin administration."

I always find those little throwaway lines about the future chilling.

As I have said and Helen has diaried, Obama is another Tony Blair in many ways. The defence of incrementalism is based on the idea that we wont't get another Bush after him. But that seems very far from certain to me.

And all this applies even if you think we're not facing (or soon to be facing) system-shaking environmental, energy supply and economic structure challenges.