On health care, aides said that Mr. Obama had been fixated on details of the law’s carrying out and that advisers did not withhold information but were likewise surprised by the scope of the problems.

“From the moment the health care bill was signed into law the president was very focused on making sure it was implemented correctly,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a senior White House adviser. “In just about every meeting, he pushed the team on whether the website was going to work. Unfortunately, it did not, and he’s very frustrated.”

Mr. Pfeiffer insisted that the president wants to hear what he needs to hear and would not accept advisers’ keeping negative information from him. “He’ll know if you don’t tell him the bad news he needs to hear, and that’s the quickest way to be on the outside looking in,” Mr. Pfeiffer said.

The challenge for any president is keeping on top of a vast array of issues, any one of which could blow up at any given time. Harry S. Truman spoke for many of his successors when he said that “the pressures and complexities of the presidency have grown to a state where they are almost too much for one man to endure.” And that was decades before metadata technology came along.

A famous question posed by Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee in a far different context — What did the president know and when did he know it? — has been a staple of political controversies in the 40 years since Watergate. Jimmy Carter was accused of being too immersed in details, including who would use the White House tennis courts, while Ronald Reagan was criticized for being too hands off, particularly when he insisted that he did not know about details of the Iran-contra operation.

Accusations that Mr. Obama is removed from the details of his programs are somewhat surprising given the reputation the president developed early in his administration for intense, consuming interest in the particulars. Before ordering more troops to Afghanistan, for instance, Mr. Obama conducted what amounted to an exhaustive three-month series of seminars on the region.