The Times wrote on February 1:

"President Obama’s self-confidence borders on complacency. He is ill served by senior staff, especially his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. He does not appear to be learning on the job as he did when campaigning for the White House. His Administration is too deferential to Congress, too reliant on the President’s personal charm, and as a result is regarded by its enemies as weak and ineffectual.

"As Mr Obama prepared to release his $3.8 trillion (£2.4 trillion) budget today, this assessment of his first year in office came not from one of his established critics on the Right, but from one of his most respected mentors — his former professor at Harvard Law School, Chris Edley... Professor Edley, who worked in the Clinton and Carter Administrations, added: 'I wouldn’t give [Obama] as high a grade as President as I gave him when he was my student. I know he can do better.'

"He reserved the harshest criticism for Mr Emanuel, the second-most powerful figure in the White House, who has been pilloried by liberals for appearing to undermine Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms since the loss of a crucial Senate seat to the Republicans...

"Mr Edley lamented the failure of the White House to force Congress into line, as President Lyndon Johnson would have done... The professor fears that Mr Obama’s best chance to deliver the change he promised may have been wasted... The Administration’s biggest mistake, he said, has been to pander to Congressional vanities by leaving the two chambers to argue about their own versions of healthcare reform with little concrete guidance from the White House..."

While President Obama is criticized by his former professor at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama's strongest challenger, "Republican" Senator Scott Brown, is giving equally confusing signals, as the next article shows.