President Obama was eager to meet real, suffering Americans in the troubled Midwest, and when he got there he promised "to do everything" he could to address the economic crisis that he had "inherited," one that he said was "as deep and as dire as any since the Great Depression."

The date was February 9, 2009; the place was Elkhart, Ind. It was the newly inaugurated president's first trip out of Washington. This week, as Obama returns to the Midwest for another attempt at assuaging the nation's economic distress, the issue that he once said he had inherited--and few people disagreed with that assessment then--is seen by more and more people as his own problem.