With President Obama’s approval ratings down and the administration taking fire from both the left and the right, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria invited what he called a "star-studded" panel of experts to chat on GPS about the president’s strengths and shortcomings in dealing with the blows that the country’s been dealt in recent weeks.

Nation Editor and Publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel joined Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and New York Times columnist Ross Douthat to dissect Obama’s failure to firmly establish the role of government and the country’s palpable shift towards the right. "He trusts people too much," Spitzer says. Vanden Heuvel chimes in to agree with Huffington and Spitzer, explaining that the massive bank bailout should have been a trade-off in which the banks were forced to commit to real reform. But the biggest problem right now? Winning the deficit vs. investment debate, vanden Heuvel says. "Unless we win that, we are going to see long-term unemployment in this country—joblessness that I think will scar this country even worse than the Great Depression."

—Carrie Battan