Picking a new head for the National Economic Council is an important moment for the president's rapidly realigning staff. The old economic models are broken, and a little entrepreneurial populism is exactly what is needed.

President Obama's current hide-the-pea approach regarding trade with China is in complete contradiction to Candidate Obama's promises throughout the 2008 campaign.

We cannot ignore the deficit hawks forever, but now is not the time for austerity. We should be talking about the three government actions that we know would most immediately create millions of new jobs.

Obama's plan to unveil tonight a non-defense discretionary spending freeze for the next three years will essentially forfeit America's growth future to China. The President, one year into his job, and still dealing with the tail winds of the worst economic disaster in global markets and the U.S. economy since the Great Depression, is saying that he is going to freeze spending on virtually everything but the wars we have on hand. America needs to invest in itself.

As important as health care reform is, it is a crushing level of unemployment that is driving the president's approval numbers, and the entire Democratic Party's political fortunes, down.