Obama the Centrist Irks a Liberal Lion

By MICHAEL POWELL
NYT

BERKELEY, Calif. — So how would he grade President Obama’s economic policies, and the new team put in place this week?

Though Robert B. Reich, the former labor secretary, endorsed Mr. Obama and has traveled to the White House to provide economic counsel, he offers a smile that looks unmistakably pained.

“We have a remarkably anemic recovery; it’s paper-thin,” Mr. Reich says. “In the narrowest, tactical terms, in sheer dollars committed to programs, Obama’s done pretty well, and his favorability ratings are better than those of the Democratic Party.”

Then he sweeps his hands far apart in his sun-filled warren of an office at the University of California, Berkeley.

“If you widen the lens, the public is being sold a big lie — that our problems owe to unions and the size of government and not to fraud and deregulation and vast concentration of wealth. Obama’s failure is that he won’t challenge this Republican narrative, and give people a story that helps them connect the dots and understand where we’re going.”

(More here.)