Will Obama deliver?

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: Comment - Barack Obama on addressing inequality

President Obama has been out on the stump lately giving mostly progressive-sounding speeches on the economy. Yet tucked into his texts he has also given hints of his old, compromising, neoliberal self.

He launched his speaking tour at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where it was nice to hear him stress the growing problem of inequality.

He denounced our "winner-take-all economy where a few do better and better, while everybody else just treads water," and he pointed out that things have actually been getting worse. "Nearly all the income gains of the past ten years have continued to flow to the top 1 percent," he said.

He decried the fact that upward mobility has gotten harder and harder in America, calling this "a betrayal of the American idea."

He called for "a better bargain for the middle class and folks working to join it," and he demanded an increase in the minimum wage, noting that in real terms it "is lower than it was when Ronald Reagan took office."

He emphasized the need for good jobs and to utilize workers who have been made idle.

He excoriated the "slash and burn partisanship" of the Republicans and warned them not to "manufacture another crisis," as they did with the debt ceiling.

And he boldly asserted that he would do whatever he could "on my own" to get the economy cooking. "I will not allow gridlock, or inaction, or willful indifference to get in our way," he said. "That means whatever executive authority I have to help the middle class, I'll use it."

If we don't move aggressively to shore up our economy, Obama made a dire prediction. "The position of the middle class will erode further," he said. "Inequality will continue to increase. Money's power will distort our politics even more. Social tensions will rise as various groups fight to hold On to what they have, or start blaming somebody else for why their position isn't improving. And the fundamental optimism that's always propelled us forward will give way to cynicism or nostalgia."

In his finest riff at Knox, he invoked community and dwelled on the best of the American character: "We're not a mean people. We're not a selfish people. We're not a people that just looks out for number one."

This call to move beyond selfishness should ring in the halls of Congress and in boardrooms around America.

Obama's Knox speech had a few problems, whose import has become more noticeable over time.

He stressed the problems of the middle class much more than those of the poor and...