In dark days before Obama the unschooled spoke of navel gazing

What exactly is the job of the president of the United States? Let's ask the man who currently holds that position, Barack Obama:

My job right now is just to make sure that everybody in the Gulf understands this is what I wake up to in the morning and this is what I go to bed at night thinking about: the spill.

Obama's job description is fascinating. He has been depicted as a proponent of "activist government," but this may be a bum rap. Now he tells us he thinks that if he somehow gets people to think about him and how much he's thinking about what he thinks they think he should be thinking about, his job is done.

Which raises only two questions: First, if the requirements of his job are so modest, why is he still having trouble meeting them? Second, couldn't all this cogitation be done at a cost of less than $3.5 trillion a year?