During Tuesday’s presidential news conference, Jonathan Karl of ABC News asked the president if he still had “the juice” to get the rest of his agenda through Congress.

The president responded jokingly.

It was a funny exchange, but also a telling one, less about this president’s ability to maneuver and push policy than about media organizations that are forever looking beyond the moment, so much so that they do little justice to . and demonstrate a marvelous vacuity about . the present.

Too many people want to skip . or write off . the second term of this presidency and begin covering the contenders for the next one.

O.K., if that’s the way you want it, let’s take a glance at that lot of unbridled ambition and hapless long shots. Get your fill. Then maybe we can get back to talking honestly about the true encumbrances to Obama’s agenda. The president’s issue is not so much his unwillingness to coax or threaten or sweet talk or browbeat. It’s the compromise-resistant form of conservatism in this country that has fed on Obama’s very existence: an illogical, immutable opposition to him. In short, Obama leads an army amassed against him.

But, so that we can get this out of our system, here’s a look at the distant 2016 presidential race, the never-ending campaigning and invariably incorrect prognosticating.

The likely candidates are in full maneuver mode and the media are hanging on it. No sooner had the Republican Party released its autopsy of why Mitt Romney lost than a slew of Republican upstarts began stampeding over the campaign’s corpse.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana . who chided his party for being the “stupid party” after the November election . has seen his poll numbers plummet, in part because of his failed, stupid plan to replace the state’s income tax with a higher sales tax. A Southern Media and Opinion Research poll released in March showed that his approval rating had dropped to 38 percent, down from 51 percent in September. Jindal is now even less popular than President Obama in Louisiana, and Obama lost that state by 18 percentage points.

The Washington Post reported this week that the F.B.I. was looking into the relationship between the Republican governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell . “Governor Vaginal Probe” (remember that ultrasound bill he supported?) .and an executive who “gave more than $100,000 in political contributions and thousands of dollars more in gifts to McDonnell’s family.”There was Senator Rand Paul’s disastrous speech at Howard University, where he sought to overlook decades of Republican Party hostility to African-Americans, subtly shift his own positions and educate students about a history they already knew all too well.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey may be the Republicans’ best hope, but it’s not clear that he could even get the nomination: he’s so disliked by the G.O.P. base that he wasn’t even invited to speak at CPAC. One of the biggest laughs during the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on Saturday came when the host, Conan O’Brien, joked:“I’d like to acknowledge that earlier this evening, there was some confusion with the seating chart. For a moment, someone accidentally sat Governor Chris Christie with the Republicans. That was awkward, and I apologize.”Jeb Bush’s own mother threw him under the campaign bus last week, saying of a possible run by the former governor of Florida, “We’ve had enough Bushes."National Review reported Wednesday that Senator Ted Cruz “is considering a presidential run, according to his friends and confidants.” Enough said.

This, of course, leaves Senator Marco Rubio. The problem is that he’s relatively unknown by most Americans. A February Fox News poll found that while 25 percent of respondents said that they thought he would make a good president, 33 percent said that they had never heard of him. Still, because he is Hispanic, the party may believe that he will up their support among that much needed voting bloc. But an April Wall Street Journal/Telemundo survey found that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s approval rating among Hispanics was nearly three times higher than Rubio’s.

Speaking of Clinton, and the Democrats, they are jousting for position, too.

Clinton is still being coy about whether she can resist the gravitational pull of the most powerful job known to man . or woman . and the history she would make if she won.

Last week, the Democratic governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley, announced while visiting Jerusalem that he might consider a run for president. He told reporters, “I plan for the latter half of this year to dedicate some more thought time . reflection time . to the question of whether or not I would run in 2016.”And The Times reported this week that the Democratic governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, who just passed a sweeping gun-control law, would be penning a memoir. We all know that memoirs by rising-star politicians are just 60,000-word resumes for the next job.

There you have it, many of the big names at least. (I’m sure you have others.) Now, any of these potentials could straighten things out . make up their minds or clean up their messes . before the next election. There’s time for them. But there’s also time for President Obama.

The second term of the Obama administration isn’t over, it’s just beginning. There are three and a half years left, for Pete’s sake. The hapless and the hopeful for 2016 will take care of themselves.