In a scene from Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act by South African dramatist Athol Fugard, a small boy builds an imaginary house in the sand. It has two rooms for his impoverished family of six. A man sees him playing and encourages the boy to expand.

"If you're going to dream," he says, "Give yourself five rooms, man."

President Obama has been playing in the sand ever since the Republican-dominated 112th Congress convened last year, a body so divided and deranged that it can barely pass routine measures, let alone critical legislation. As the election looms, Obama's chance of getting any bills passed is asymptotically approaching zero, and his proposals are like imaginary houses that will never be built.

That has not stopped him from producing them. His latest gambit is a five-point "to do list" for Congress. Its elements are all measures that he has previously proposed without success, including various tax incentives to encourage hiring, mortgage refinance efficiencies, and a jobs programs for veterans.

"These initiatives have bipartisan support and at this make-or-break moment for the middle class, we need to create an economy built to last," insists the White House.

But collecting these various proposals under the uninspiring idiom of a to-do list will not smooth their passage at this "make-or-break moment." The administration's experts surely realize that Republican legislators have no interest in passing anything Obama puts forward right now. We can only conclude the real purpose of this announcement is political--an effort to demonstrate that the President is trying to solve problems while Congress stalls.

What it actually demonstrates is the administration's failure of imagination--or perhaps lack of courage--in confronting a persistent crisis that has lasted the duration of Obama's term and shows little sign of abating. As our problems fester, the administrations' remedies seem to grow smaller every year. The ideas that Obama has incorporated into his to-do list are so tiny and lifeless that neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post nor the Wall Street Journal even bothered to catalog them.

If the proposals had any a chance of being enacted, there might be an argument for downsizing them. A minor bill that becomes law is better than no bill at all. But in the current political environment, even minor bills are hopeless.

Rather than hammer futilely at the small stuff, Obama might have taken the opportunity to think big--to present the American people with a bold stimulus plan that could finally wrench us free from this crevasse we've fallen into, even if it had no chance of passage.

If you're going to dream, give yourself a New Deal, man.

But instead of a New Deal, we've been offered an Old Hat, a cluster of small, tired ideas that will do little to inspire voters who once celebrated "the audacity of hope." If Obama wins, it will only be because his opponent's old hat is even smaller and shabbier. Either way, it bodes poorly.

Michael Wolraich is the author of Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual