ATLANTA - Derided as a socialist by many of his critics, Barack Obama has been handed the reins of power during capitalism's greatest economic crisis in 80 years.
If his critics are right, if Mr. Obama really does want to dismantle the capitalist system, this should be his golden opportunity. He would be the perfect man, and this the perfect moment.
But that's not what's happening. Quite the contrary, instead of undoing capitalism, Mr. Obama is trying desperately to reform and save it. If it works, he will end up being capitalism's best friend and hero.
Given public anger and fear, Mr. Obama could be a lot more radical. He could be proposing marginal tax rates of 80 percent or higher on the richest Americans, like we had back in the 1950s, and with just a little stoking of public anger at the economic elite, he could probably pass it.
After all, 85 House Republicans - almost half the GOP caucus-bowed to populist sentiment last week by voting in favor of taxing AIG bonuses at 90 percent. That idea began to die only when Mr. Obama stepped in to say he didn't think it was wise or necessary.
Mr. Obama does propose to raise the top rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, largely to help keep the deficit within the lower stratosphere. But that hardly makes him socialist.
As he said in his news conference Tuesday, "Let's go back to the rules that existed ... during the Clinton era, when wealthy people were still wealthy and doing just fine."
Mr. Obama could also make himself a popular man - at least for a while - by announcing that he was finished trying to bail out Wall Street with hundreds of billions of dollars and that the financial industry should be allowed to collapse into a smoking pile of ruin as punishment for its greed.
There's a bull market for that kind of populism, and its appeal cuts across the political spectrum. Many on the ideological right distrust any government involvement with business, dismissing arguments that it might be necessary in a crisis. In their purist view, the free market has to be allowed to punish failure, even at the risk of that punishment falling on millions of innocents as well.
Many on the left would be happy to let it fall as well. They're unhappy that Mr. Obama is trying to reinforce the existing economic structure; they don't like the fact that some of those who got us into this mess are being rewarded for helping us get out of it. And they see a trillion dollars going to prop up Wall Street and they wonder how many poor and middle-class people could be helped with that kind of money.
Some, including Nobel laureates such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz, argue on economic grounds that Mr. Obama's plan doesn't go far enough, that's it's too timid and too respectful of the existing structure of global capitalism.
"It's as if the President were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street," Mr. Krugman wrote in his New York Times cloumn.
"And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone."
I don't pretend to have the training or expertise to know whether Mr. Krugman and Mr. Stiglitz are right, although other top economists disagree strongly with their analysis. But it's pretty striking that groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers - groups at the core of American capitalism - have embraced Mr. Obama's effort to save the financial system and get the economy restarted.
They balk, of course, at Mr. Obama's insistence on greater regulation of that system. But that's the price they'll have to pay for public support for saving capitalism - it's difficult to argue in practical rather than ideological terms that tighter regulation isn't needed.
Mr. Obama is trying to use government to save capitalism, understanding that in the modern era, the two institutions need each other. Government provides the basic, essential stability that unfettered capitalism cannot. And capitalism provides the prosperity that government cannot.
Mr. Obama further understands that its not just public faith in capitalism that is being tested in this crisis. Public faith in government has collapsed as well. Mr. Obama's goal is to resurrect the reputations of both, understanding that in the modern world you can't save one without the other.