Artur Davis: Is Obama’s Populism Plausible?

The defining issues of our time ought to be why an economy with all our underlying strengths takes two years to generate a million jobs (for a stretch in 83 and 84 it was taking all of a month); or why we trail a significant portion of the developed world in educational excellence; or why we are yielding the first generation of 18 to 35 year olds who will under-perform their parents in relative earnings; or why the dropout rate in an advanced society like ours, that puts no barriers on public education, remains so stubbornly high.

Economic inequality does belong on the list – middle-income work generates too little reward and both parties seem flat out of ideas on how to roll back poverty -but it is not, as the president suggests, a function of government having aligned itself with the powerful. Instead, inequality is one more symptom of an abundant nation not performing at full capacity.

A dramatic hike in upper income taxes tomorrow wouldn’t move the needle an inch on the inequality front.

On the politics of it all, the president’s rhetoric always shines and its a sound contrast to Republicans who are struggling to defend the merits of the modern economy. As substance, its another sign of liberalism spending more time defining the past than solving the future.

(Cross-posted, with permission of the author, from Politico’s Arena)