The good news is that President Obama appears to have decided to devote the rest of his presidency to trying to tackle the forces behind the yawning inequities that have hamstrung social and economic mobility, eroding the living standards of the middle class.

The bad news is that he may not be up to the task.

Consider the ideas he outlined during his speech at Knox College last week. Some are old. Some are new. Some are good, some less so. But the main problem with the set is that the politically feasible — those that he articulated with the most specificity — are the least likely to change the nation’s economic dynamics.

Connecting the nation’s schools to broadband is a good idea. So is tweaking the tax code to help ordinary Americans save for retirement.

Measured against what the president called “the forces that have conspired against the middle class for decades,” however, they are less than overwhelming.