President Barack Obama seemed to have two main purposes Tuesday night in his address to Congress: reassure Americans rattled by an ever-worsening recession and announce to the nation that he intends to plunge ahead with a bold, ambitious agenda during his first year in office, recession or no recession.

"Let there be no doubt," the president declared, "health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year."

Nor can legislation addressing climate change and carbon emissions wait, apparently.

"I ask this Congress to send me legislation that places a market-based cap on carbon pollution," Obama said, "and drives the production of more renewable energy in America."

The president will pursue these two major initiatives, moreover, even as his administration deploys a series of complex and far-reaching plans designed to loosen up the credit crunch, save big banks, alleviate the foreclosure crisis, rescue and reshape the domestic auto industry, fashion an exit plan for Iraq, revitalize the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, revamp the financial regulatory system, and begin work to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term.

"History reminds us that at every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas," Obama said, by way of explaining his extraordinary agenda.

Big ideas indeed.

The trick for the president and the Democratic Congress will be to enact health-care reform and a cap-and- trade carbon-emissions regulatory system that doesn't conflict with efforts to resuscitate the economy. But can that be done? Won't health- care reform inevitably enlarge the federal entitlement burden? Won't a carbon cap necessarily pile additional burdens on reeling industry?

The president says health-care reform is essential to curb its "crushing cost." In the long run, perhaps. But whether that goal can be achieved in the short term while expanding the pool of those covered remains to be seen.

Obama did provide Americans with a compelling (and we believe justified) case for long-term optimism. "While our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken," the president said, "though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before."

There is no reason that can't be true. There is no reason to think that the 21st century can't be "another American century," as Obama suggested, given this nation's reservoirs of talent, inventiveness and drive.

The president was surely onto something when he spoke of the "generosity," "resilience," "decency" and "determination" that characterizes so many Americans in these trying times, and of how "every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed."

Most of them want him to succeed, too. We know we do - perhaps especially now that he has embraced one of the most ambitious first-year agendas in memory.