Back in the early days of the Obama administration, as the new president and his staff kept adding legislative priorities to their to-do list, critics would ask how they would manage to handle such a large load. “We can’t afford not to,” was the typical reply. Health care reform can’t wait. Energy policy reform can’t wait. Financial regulatory reform can’t wait. These things must be addressed, and they must be address this year.

But increasingly, reform is waiting. An overhaul of the financial regulatory apparatus might not pass through Congress until next year. And even as Representative James Oberstar is preparing to roll out his proposal for a new transportation bill, Transportation secretary Ray LaHood is asking Congress to delay a major overhaul for 18 months.

Ezra writes today that these kinds of delays are problematic — they allow the get-things-done atmosphere of crisis to ebb, and the lobbyists to mobilize. I don’t necessarily agree with this. In Congress, the crisis mindset evaporated sometime last autumn, when it became clear that no amount of scaremongering over the fate of the economy and the financial system would convince the legislature to push through more money for banks or stimulus. For the whole of Obama’s young presidency, Congress has been down to business as usual.

And perhaps delay empowers the special interests, but it’s not clear that they need encouragement. Delay is in the interests of a majority of legislators. Republicans want to slow the process down, because delay is a first step toward death for bold proposals. Moderate Democrats want to slow the process down, because intransigence increases their ability to extract concessions and gets them more camera time. On any given bill, the constituency for speedy passage is in the minority.

The real problem with a slower approach to these issues is that the administration doesn’t seem to have adjusted its gameplan for the long haul. In its do-it-all-at-once approach, the adminstration seems to be following Mike Lux’s “snowball” strategy for reform — you defeat one interest and it becomes easier to defeat the next interest. A big win on health care reform paves the way for a big win on energy, and the dominoes fall quickly and easily. In this scenario, it’s not necessary to devote resources to all legislative priorities equally. Instead you focus on one thing and let your Congressional allies lay the groundwork for other policy areas. Then, when you win on the first big issue, the apparent opposition to your other initiatives melts away.

But in extending the calendar on key policy priorities, the adminstration appears to be conceding that things might not play out in this manner. If you think a big health care win will give you momentum, you don’t acknowledge that regulatory reform may have to wait until 2010, you get your legislative allies to get a bill ready to go, ASAP. But a new timetable requires new tactics. If momentum isn’t going to carry legislation through, then the administration will have to figure out how to solve Congress. It will have to go to the mat on every bill it really cares about to break the Senate bottleneck. It has to commit.

I don’t think we’ve seen the Obama administration do this yet. We haven’t seen the big sell. And this is starting to make people nervous. Advocates for reform in all kinds of policy areas are watching what Congress is doing to their pet bills in horror, and wondering when Obama will draw the line, and say, loudly and clearly, enough. Maybe it’s coming. But for now, the ball is in Ben Nelson’s court. The gavel is in Evan Bayh’s hands. Time is on Arlen Specter’s side. These people are far too narrowly self-interested to be rolled by Obama rhetoric. It’s going to take muscle to dislodge them.

Nobody thinks wistfully about the transformative potential of an Oympia Snowe presidency, but if Obama can’t find a way to grind throught the morass of the Senate, an Olympia Snowe agenda is exactly what we’ll get. The game has changed. It’s not a sprint, anymore, it’s a marathon. And in a marathon, you have to have a plan. The question is, do they?