Robert Kuttner, one of the leading progressive thinkers and writers on the national scene, drew about 100 serious policy enthusiasts to a Growth & Justice-sponsored event on a recent Sunday afternoon in Minneapolis, where they heard Kuttner address one of the toughest questions of our times: “Obama’s Challenge: Is He Maximizing the Moment?”

Kuttner linked Obama’s setbacks of late to a flawed strategy that includes over-reliance on economic advisers who were too close and too supportive of the Wall Street players that helped cause the economic collapse. Obama needs to get more aggressive in addressing the recovery, should move ahead with another round of economic stimulus measures, and needs to consider dumping and replacing key members of his policy team, Kuttner said.

• Obama has the potential to become a “transformational" president, like Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson, and to enact sweeping progressive changes that could rival the abolition of slavery and preservation of the Union, the New Deal, or the Civil Rights movement.
  
• In order to pull this off, Kuttner said, “he’s going to have to take on Wall Street, he’s going to have to take on preconceived notions about deficit spending and he is going to need to take on members of his own party."
  
• Kuttner noted that in his book Obama’s Challenge, written before the November election, he predicted that it would be disastrous for Obama to try to enact health-care reform in the first year of his term, because it would distract him from his primary task of economic rescue and recovery.

Click here to listen to the full audio recording of this event.