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Obama started Wednesday at the Tastee Sub Shop in Edison, N.J., where he attended a roundtable with small-business owners. He ended the day mingling with some of New York's wealthiest at the Greenwich Village townhouse of Vogue editor Anna Wintour. Price of admission: $30,000.

The latest flare-up of Democratic disunity has to do with how the party should respond to an explosion in government debt. This is a serious policy debate, obviously, and something of a political one, too, since both sides also have in mind November’s midterm elections. But in a more fundamental way, the argument over fiscal policy represents the churning of a cultural fault line that has defined and destabilized Democratic politics pretty much since the onset of the Great Society. And President Obama is only the latest Democratic Party leader to find himself tossed about in the tremors.

WASHINGTON — There are no Secret Service agents posted next to the barista and no presidential seal on the ceiling, but the Caribou Coffee across the street from the White House has become a favorite meeting spot to conduct Obama administration business.

Seidenberg's remarks reflect corporate America's growing discontent with Obama. The president has assiduously courted the nation's top executives since taking office last year, seeking their counsel on economic policy in the wake of the recession and issuing dozens of invitations to the White House. In return, the Roundtable has generally supported the president's policies; it was the only major business group to back Obama's successful push for an overhaul of the health-care system.

Has Obama indeed reinvented the art and science of winning elections, or will 2008 turn out to have been a unique moment that suited the particular gifts of one politician? The Democrats are about to lay down $50 million to find out.

While the Bush administration had approved some clandestine military activities far from designated war zones, the new order is intended to make such efforts more systematic and long term, officials said. Its goals are to build networks that could “penetrate, disrupt, defeat or destroy” Al Qaeda and other militant groups, as well as to “prepare the environment” for future attacks by American or local military forces, the document said. The order, however, does not appear to authorize offensive strikes in any specific countries.

What Kuttner does better than anyone who’s written about the financial collapse is to illuminate the dark intersections between finance and politics. For example, he offers a blow-by-blow account of the government’s bailout of Citigroup. Kuttner describes how Robert Rubin, Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, as chairman of Citi’s executive committee “became a relentless force prodding the bank to pursue ever greater risks’’ that ultimately imploded. Rubin would later use his unmatched government connections to rescue his employer, as the government handed Citi $20 billion in capital and over $300 billion in guarantees for toxic assets. As Kuttner sums it up: “As a financial strategist, Robert Rubin had proven worse than useless. . . . But as a political fixer, Rubin was pure gold.’’

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Within a year-- Provides a $250 rebate to Medicare prescription drug plan beneficiaries whose initial benefits run out.90 days after enactment-- Provides immediate access to high-risk pools for people who have no insurance because of preexisting conditions.Six months after enactment-- Bars insurers from denying people coverage when they get sick.