Neil Barofsky is not the sort of guy you want popping up in a tight election race, not if you’re Barack Obama.

That's first because Barofsky is an all-too-credible critic of the Obama administration’s lopsided economic approach, which included throwing enormous resources into bucking up big banks and then allowing them to grow even bigger while slighting the underwater homeowners whose plight has weighed down the recovery on which the president's reelection probably depends. Second, it's because Barofsky is out there trying to sell a new book — Bailout: An Inside Account of How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street — which offers a devastating indictment of Obama’s team, especially his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner.