Goolsbee was at the top of his game last September when he squared off against McCain economic adviser Douglas Holtz Eakin. Perhaps his best line: saying that Fruit Loops had more details on the side of its box than John McCain did about his economic plan.

Goolsbee has advised Barack Obama since they first met in 2004.

During a 2004 campaign debate with Alan Keyes, his Republican opponent for an Illinois Senate seat, Democrat Barack Obama repeatedly cited the opinions of a "Professor Goolsbee."

After spending a night hearing his advice referenced on television while sitting beside the candidate’s wife Michelle, Austan Goolsbee ’91, who had recently been appointed Obama’s economic adviser, finally decided to meet the candidate in person backstage.

He knocked on the dressing room door and found himself face to face with Obama.

"Who are you?" the candidate asked.

"Professor Goolsbee," Goolsbee replied.

"What? You are Professor Goolsbee?" Obama exclaimed. "You don’t look anything like a professor, and you don’t look anything like a Goolsbee!"

Now, Goolsbee says, Obama "thinks of him as 'another skinny guy with an even funnier name'."

Goolsbee had a rocky introduction to the national stage this spring when a Canadian official mischaracterized a meeting between Goolsbee and the Candadian consulate in Chicago on NAFTA. Nonetheless, Obama stood by Goolsbee.

Goolsbee has a reputation as a market-oriented moderate, and has been praised by none other than George Will. But despite his approach to economics, Goolsbee in October, 2007 focused on the growing gap between the wealthy and everybody else as one of America's chief economic problems:

Goolsbee’s outlook on America’s economic future reflects Obama’s idealism and emphasis on bridging the two-party divide. Goolsbee said the policies he recommends address both the short- and long-term rejuvenation of the economy, in the hopes of providing a safety net while the country’s economy rebuilds.

"If this income structure remains in place for 20 years, it implies a very different America and a very different American dream," he said.

For the first time in almost 100 years, Goolsbee said, productivity growth is not translating into wage increases for the majority of Americans.

"The top income levels have blown off the chart, but that’s not the issue," he said. "The bottom 95 to 98 percent of income have been stagnant for the last six years. ... That is extremely disturbing."

It is disturbing -- and now Goolsbee is in a position to do something about it -- and to do it with a bang: