The president’s stated belief is that if everyone is a little unhappy, it must be a good compromise. This may be true when picking the family dog, but when applied to negotiations with Congress this idea of compromise has created a mishmash of sound and unsound economic policies and destroyed our middle class over the last 30y years.

Our predecessors lived through what my grandfather called “Hoover Times” – the beginning of the Great Depression and the end days for the stranglehold corporations had over America’s economic policies throughout the first part of the last century.

Voter outcry during Hoover Times led to huge Democratic victories and to the New Deal, which shifted power away from the corporations and, over the next 50 years, created and strengthened the American middle-class.

Hopefully one day I will be able to tell my grandchildren about “Obama Times” – when a president who compromised by kowtowing to corporate power was succeeded by one who championed for a second New Deal and gave rebirth to a strong middle class.