For those who have ever confronted the infamous case interview when applying for that big time job or summer internship, the feeling is familiar. You first walk into a neatly prepared room and meet one or two smiling interviewers with a clammy, excessively firm handshake. After a few minutes of chat and exploration about why you want to work for the company, the interviewers announce they are going to give you a hypothetical business problem to analyze and solve.

With a quick flash of the pearly whites and a gleam in their eyes, the masters of your fate proceed to drop a case issue before you that is so complex, so utterly broad in its scope, so impossible to process at one time, you suddenly find yourself struggling to hold down that hastily devoured breakfast. The interviewers look on expectantly. The silence grows. The clock ticks on frantically. You’re heart seizes up in a rush of pure adrenaline.

Having experienced several of these moments first-hand, I can personally attest that case interviews can be a hair-raising and even brutal exercise. Yet beyond the outcome of the interview itself, the process of throwing one’s entire intellectual might at a new problem yields an important lesson: structure counts.

Case interviews present complex issues for a very specific reason. More often than not, interviewers want to see how an interviewee prioritizes information and identifies the real problems at hand, not necessarily how he or she can solve every problem in one fell swoop. In reviewing President Obama’s January 27 State of the Union Address, Obama could stand to put these same principles to work.

In his speech, Obama outlined, among other items, a three year freeze in non-security government spending from 2011 to 2013, tax cuts for small and middle sized businesses, expansion in alternative energy and green technologies, new development in nuclear power, and a commitment to fixing healthcare. While many of these goals are admirable in their own right, Obama also declared that his policies would effectively combat the budget deficit and rein in both the private and public sector inefficiencies that have contributed to the recent economic crisis. Once again, it seems, Obama’s rhetoric is outrunning his policy. How exactly are these policies going to put America back on track?

According to a growing number of economists, the U.S. has improved its economic stability in the near term, albeit precariously. When credit dried up and the housing bubble burst, Obama reacted effectively by concentrating his stimulus and rescue efforts on narrow, targeted sectors, namely the financial industry, housing, and major manufacturing industries deemed most critical to the national economy at large.  Obama and his team deserve fair credit for such and for staving off the worst effects of the financial market meltdown in the short run.  Nevertheless, as a result of these emergency measures enacted, the government deficit has swollen.  The national debt currently stands at a gluttonous $1.3 trillion and is likely to continue growing with increased costs in Social Security and Medicare. Abandoning prioritized recovery now and instead attempting to bring America back into roaring year-on-year growth with a shotgun, “let a thousand flowers bloom” approach appears optimistic at best and naïve at worst.

What Obama needs are effective, concentrated solutions to the nation’s largest problems, namely U.S. unemployment and the budget deficit. However, despite acknowledging the need for real policy solutions on these issues in his State of the Union address, Obama remains cripplingly thin on details. Having lost the Senate super-majority he had needed to pass his healthcare program, on Wednesday Obama set no specific objectives or timelines for reform. On energy policy, Obama offered mere “incentives” for his cap-and-trade energy reduction plan and failed to specify what those incentives would be. Even the $787 billion in economic stimulus approved last year largely remains on the table. The public outcry after billions in stimulus money went to Nebraska (a relatively healthy state economically) in exchange for Senator Ben Nelson’s (R) healthcare vote was immense. Yet without a well defined plan forward for the rest of the money, one must wonder if more taxpayer dollars will fall helplessly into the hands of special interest groups.

 Obama and his economic team have identified a number of issues troubling the U.S. economy today, yet attempting to solve every source of economic malaise simultaneously will yield results far too late to be useful. Obama must focus on passing a viable healthcare bill and upholding his promise to guard taxpayer stimulus money from special interests. Policies like a three-year government spending freeze may appeal to more conservative voters, yet the estimated $250 billion in savings over ten years from this program will mean nothing if the cumulative deficit balloons to $6 trillion by 2020, as expected. Healthcare, financial, and stimulus inefficiencies are holding the U.S. recovery down. Obama must call on a limited, structured approach exclusively around these core issues if he is to have the economic power to solve more subtle economic problems down the road.