We know because he said so, in the first of many famous speeches, that Barack Obama doesnt see Red America or Blue America he only sees the United States of America. But as the president contemplates his faltering poll numbers and his stalling health care push, he might want to consider a more colorful perspective.

The red/blue contrast is often overdrawn. But its a sensible way to understand Obamas summer struggles. On health care, energy, taxes and spending, hes pushing a blue-state agenda during a recession thats exposed some of the blue-state models weaknesses, and some of the red-state models strengths.

Consider Texas and California. In the Bush years, liberal polemicists turned the presidents home state pious, lightly regulated, stingy with public services and mad for sprawl into a symbol of everything that was barbaric about Republican America. Meanwhile, California, always liberalisms favorite laboratory, was passing global warming legislation and pouring billions into stem-cell research.

But flash forward to the current recession, and suddenly Texas looks like a model citizen. The Lone Star kept growing well after the country had dipped into recession. Its unemployment rate and foreclosure rate are both well below the national average. Its one of only six states that didnt run budget deficits in 2009.

Meanwhile, California, long a paradise for regulators and public-sector unions, has become a fiscal disaster area. And it isnt the only dark blue basket case. Eight states had unemployment over 11 percent in June; seven went for Barack Obama last November. Fourteen states are facing 2010 budget gaps that exceed 20 percent of their GDP; only two went for John McCain. (Strikingly, theyre McCains own Arizona and Sarah Palins Alaska.) Of the nine states that have raised taxes this year, closing deficits at the expense of growth, almost all are liberal bastions.

The urban scholar Joel Kotkin has called this recession a blue-state meltdown. That overstates the case: The Deep South has been hit hard by unemployment, and some liberal regions are weathering the storm reasonably well.

But in state capital after state capital, the downturn has highlighted the weaknesses of liberal governance the zeal for unsustainable social spending, the preference for regulation over job creation, the heavy reliance for tax revenue on the volatile incomes of the upper, upper class.

And, inevitably, the tendency toward political corruption. The Republicans have their mistresses, but the Democrats are dealing with a more serious array of scandals: The Blagojevich-Burris embarrassment in Illinois, Sen. Christopher Dodds dubious mortgage dealings in Connecticut, the expansive graft case in New Jersey and a slew of corruption investigations featuring Democratic congressmen. This helps explain why the Republican Party might be competitive in the Northeast for the first time in years.

And it also helps explain Obamas current difficulties. The president is pushing a California-style climate-change bill at a time when businesses (and people) are fleeing the Golden State in droves. Hes pushing a health care plan that looks a lot like the system hemorrhaging money in Massachusetts. His ballooning deficits resemble the shortfalls paralyzing state capitals from Springfield to Sacramento.

Never let a serious crisis go to waste, Rahm Emanuel remarked last fall. But in a crisis, all the public tends to care about are jobs and economic growth. Its not the ideal time to pass costly social legislation that promises to reap dividends only in the long term, if at all.

Thats why Franklin Roosevelt waited until 1935, when the Great Depression seemed to be waning, to push Social Security through Congress. Its why Lyndon Johnson established Medicare at the peak of the long post-World War II expansion. And its why Massachusetts health care plan and Californias cap on greenhouse-gas emissions both passed at the height of the recent boom, rather than the bottom.

Obama is still broadly popular, and the public is still broadly sympathetic to his administrations agenda. But the money has to come from somewhere. You cant have a bold new liberal era without the growth to pay for it.