White House with little private sector experience increasingly seen as hostile toward business

July 8, 2010 04:33


Those of you reading usACTIONnews.com already knew this but he idea that President Obama is anti-business broke into the mainstream this week. Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria wrote Monday that after speaking with numerous corporate executives, most of whom voted for Obama, he found that “all think he is, at his core, anti-business.” Now if we can just get them to understand that Obama is anti American too.

By Jon WardThe Daily Caller

The idea that President Obama is anti-business broke into the mainstream this week.

It has long been a widely held view on the right that Obama’s rhetorical nods to the free market and American business were little more than that. But as Washington slowly staggered back to work this week following a long July 4 weekend, discussions of Obama’s troubled relationship with the private sector popped up with surprising frequency.

Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria wrote Monday that after speaking with numerous corporate executives, most of whom voted for Obama, he found that “all think he is, at his core, anti-business.” Tuesday, the Washington Post reported on a 65 percent decline from two years ago in donations to Democrats from Wall Street, due to the financial regulation bill nearing passage in Congress.

On Wednesday, the Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove reported from the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado that New York Daily News owner and publisher Mortimer Zuckerman said the Obama White House has a “hostility to the very kinds of [business] culture that have made this the great country that it is and was.”

Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post noted: “There is no denying it — bad blood has developed between big business and the Obama administration, and that’s not a good thing.” Pearlstein argued that businesses could do much more to pull their weight on improving the economy rather than blaming the administration.

Even Bloomberg News Washington editor Al Hunt, in an op-ed arguing that Obama is not anti-business, said that “Obama should realize that’s what he too often conveys.”

Complaints about economic uncertainty created by Obama’s health care bill and the financial regulation bill have already been percolating for a few weeks. Much of this was kicked off by an explosive indictment of Obama’s policies by Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg – who has been a key business ally of the president’s – in late June.

And though the White House feels that it has true free market believers such as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council director Larry Summers in key decision-making positions, many top business leaders see the two – who have both been in government or academia their entire lives – as poor substitutes for men or women with actual business expertise.

FULL STORY



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