If Ronald Reagan was the “Great Communicator,” Barack Obama is the “Great Conciliator.” It may always have been thus.

“Obama is always disappointing people who feel that he gives too much respect or yields too much ground to the other side, rather than fighting aggressively for his principles,” wrote Larissa MacFarquhar in a New Yorker profile in May 2007, 18 months before he was elected president.

He has done nothing since to disprove that notion. Continuing a massive troop presence in Iraq; upping the number of troops deployed to Afghanistan; leaving a place at the table for private insurers in his health care reform plan and industry in his climate control plan.

On Wednesday, this practitioner of domestic realpolitik unveiled the most massive overhaul of financial regulation since the New Deal. It will be said of Mr. Obama what was said then of Franklin D. Roosevelt: He didn’t go far enough.

It may also be said, as it was said of FDR, that he aims at the possible, not the perfect. Mr. Obama told reporters on Tuesday, “We want to get this thing passed, and speed is important. We want to it right. We want to do it carefully. But we don’t want to tilt at windmills.”

As to the importance of speed: It has been nearly a year since the financial markets imploded, and only now are the president and Congress preparing to make sure it doesn’t happen again. And inasmuch as Congress is expected to spend the summer and fall debating climate change and health care reform, it may be well into 2010 before serious debate begins on regulatory change.

The greatest shortcoming in Mr. Obama’s regulatory plan is its failure to address the immense political power of the banking and financial industry. All the regulations in the world — and there are a lot of new ones in the plan — cannot control an industry that owns as much of Congress as this one does.

Consider this plaintive reaction to Mr. Obama’s plan from House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio,“I think it’s just going to be too big of a foot on an industry that already is having financial problems.”

The industry will whine, but its influence is seen in Mr. Obama’s plan. Much of the current regulatory structure is left in place. Bankers still will be able to find friendly ears in high places. Limits on executive compensation are mostly theoretical. The proposed first-ever regulations on hedge funds are absurdly mild.

That said, Mr. Obama’s proposal offers many distinct improvements, chiefly the creation of a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. With the right leadership and the right rule-making ability, the CFPA should be able to prevent a recurrence of the kind of deep-rooted mortgage fraud and credit card abuses that some in the financial industry practiced.

We like the idea of turning the Federal Reserve into what Derek Thompson of The Atlantic’s business blog called a “free safety,” roaming the field to identify and deal with systemic risks to the economy. The proposal to extend regulation to all “Tier 1 FHCs” — that is, big financial holding companies that act like banks even though they aren’t technically banks — is long overdue. The derivative and credit default swap markets would be policed.

The coming months will offer ample opportunity to discuss this plan in detail. For the time being, the key question is whether it would prevent what happened last year from happening again. The answer is: Maybe. With this president and this Congress, maybe is as good as it gets.