Though I was disheartened by the president’s jobs speech, Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute was not. Mike has emerged as one of the most prominent left-of-center critics of the president’s economic approach, and he found the speech encouraging. In a wide-ranging post, he first offered a critique of what he sees as the Obama administration’s misdiagnosis of the economic crisis followed by a survey of the various proposals in the American Jobs Act. His conclusion is as follows:

What does this signal on the ideas front? We’ll see where the deficits speech goes in the next week, but it certainly looks to be a move against the austerity/confidence games that the administration lost 18 months playing and toward the government moving on creating jobs. There’s a need to give an extra lifeline to a weak economy and it’s the government’s job to do it. The fundamentals — low inflation, low wage growth, high unemployment, low job vacancies, record-low borrowing costs — all demand this plus even more. Obama also identified the enemy: those that would opportunistically use this moment to dismantle the parts of government they don’t like and shift power and wealth to the top. Significantly more than I asked for in a speech; let’s see where it goes now.

For those of you who read the mainstream and the right-of-center press, I recommend reading Mike’s post as a good guide to an alternative framework for understanding the mess we’re in and how to get out of it. Not surprisingly, I disagree with Mike pretty thoroughly, but he is a keen observer of the economic landscape.

Perhaps more to the point, Mike gives us a clear-eyed picture of where the Obama administration is going. As he observes, Obama has identified the enemy: conservatives who believe that public sector reform is essential to improving America’s long-term growth prospects and that we need to actively pursue it, despite determined resistance from entrenched incumbents. You’ll note that Mike and I characterize the constituencies somewhat differently, but that is to be expected. Given that I consider myself part of this “enemy,” it’s not at all surprising that I’m less favorably disposed towards the Obama agenda.