Everyone with a functioning brain cell knew Obama was going to throw out the Bush policy, because he campaigned on the issue. The real shock lies in recollecting just how wobbly is the pulpit from which he preaches. For all the disdain Obama showed the "political agenda" behind the Bush order, his redo on stem cell research is fluorescently political. Liberals, who make up Obama's biggest constituency, dislike the right-wing "fundamentalists" they accuse Bush of courting. Family members of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's patients clamor for intensified research into causes and cures. If you ran for president as the Un-Bush, you know what victory demands by way of performance.

During the campaign Obama talked of finding "common ground" on abortion and, presumably, other human life questions. Common ground turns out to mean, my ground, my rules, of course you're welcome to stand here on those entirely thoughtful and reasonable terms.

The most that opponents of stem cell research get is acknowledgment of their decency -- with the implied caveat that they ought to drop the "politics."

A long presidency, from the human-life (as well as the economic-financial) perspective, this is going to be. Indeed, the stem cell business raises the question -- leave ethics aside -- of how practical a presidency Obama's will prove.

As you reach out to hit the reset button -- Joe Biden's metaphor -- on American government, how much sense does it make to take aboard huge new difficulties as you purport to solve old ones? How about your critics? Do they need more ammunition -- rhetorical variety -- than they had anyway? Do they merit more than mere "respect" (as Obama put it) for a "point of view" being shut down? Or would that be more than "transformational," "post-partisan," politics truly demands?

The stem cell research order, for all that we saw it coming, joins the already long and growing list of fears about Obama's goals and operational style. Still, you learn who the "ideologues" are: people who don't see things the way their new president does.