NY Times May 3, 2010 For Obama, a Nonstop Juggling Act By JACKIE CALMES President Obama’s spokesman promised for a second day on Monday that the administration would “keep our boot on the throat of BP” to get the company to resolve the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet, hours later, the president was hosting dinner at the White House with executives of the Business Council. Among the companies represented by the corporate club: BP.
Those kinds of cross currents have become a hallmark of Mr. Obama’s presidency. Governing in a time of prolonged economic crisis, he seeks to balance his oft-professed regard for the free market and the job-creating potential of big business against the need to respond to the angry populism of voters on the left and right convinced that corporate America — whether banks or mine owners or oil companies — has only its own interests at heart. From the time he took office, Mr. Obama’s juggling has made for a shifting and sometimes inconsistent record of rhetoric and policy. He has mixed, for example, condemnation of “Wall Street greed” with opposition to government caps on financiers’ bonuses, and criticism of oil companies’ profits with a recent call (now in abeyance) to expand offshore drilling. It is enough to give rise to the equally contradictory criticisms he endures, from longtime enemies on the right crying socialism and from disillusioned supporters on the left who lament what they see as Mr. Obama’s pro-business bias. By his own reckoning, Mr. Obama has always been hard to peg ideologically. His Republican opponents charge that he is masking a left-wing agenda in centrist-sounding words. His supporters, including those who work for him, say he is a pragmatist whose instincts are genuinely centrist, both as a matter of politics and style. The expression about a boot on BP’s throat, for example, would be atypical of Mr. Obama; his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, expropriated the colorful imagery from Ken Salazar, the interior secretary. “The president calls it as he sees it,” said the senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s liaison to the business community. “He’s not calibrating his responses politically, seeking favor from the left or the right.” Ms. Jarrett as well as Mr. Obama and his economic team were dining Monday night at the White House with the Business Council’s 13-member executive committee, which includes the chief executives of Exxon Mobil, JPMorgan Chase, Aetna, WellPoint, Dow Chemical, Boeing and Bechtel Group. BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, who is not on the executive committee but is a member of the council, did not attend, according to a White House official. While the economy is much improved from when Mr. Obama took office, his agenda and external events continue to demand engagement with big business even as he seeks to represent the interests and complaints of average Americans and small businesses. Yet as is often the case in striking a middle ground, those on either side remain unsatisfied. In swearing to recover every last dime the government spends on BP’s spill, Mr. Obama is reflecting the pain of bailout-weary taxpayers. And fighting in recent weeks for Senate passage of a bill tightening regulation of the financial system, he has demanded a new overseer to protect consumers — over banks’ vehement opposition — even as he has sought business support for the legislation by arguing that he has been warding off much more stringent regulations from his party’s left. For all of Mr. Obama’s differences with business leaders, “they’ll tell you they’ve never had a better direct relationship with any president,” said Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff. For Mr. Emanuel and other veterans of the Clinton administration, Mr. Obama’s tricky navigation between business and populism recalls the forces that buffeted Bill Clinton early in his administration, as the nation emerged from a much less severe recession. To the chagrin of the liberals who helped elect him, Mr. Clinton pursued a centrist agenda of deficit reduction and free trade — though not always happily. “Where are all the Democrats?” he once lashed out at his advisers, angry at not being able to keep his promises for domestic investments. “I hope you’re all aware we’re all Eisenhower Republicans.” “Growing up in Arkansas, Clinton could do the antibusiness populism riff better than anybody,” said William A. Galston, a former Clinton policy adviser. “He had that in his bones. But he decided not to pursue that approach.” But, Mr. Galston added, “he was able to do that in part because anger against business was not nearly as intense in that period as President Obama faces.” Mr. Clinton, too, took heat from his left. The failure of disillusioned liberals to vote in the 1994 midterm elections was a factor in Democrats’ losing their Congressional majorities — the fallout that Democrats fear now. But perhaps because Mr. Obama inherited the worst economic downturn since the Depression, he has drawn more complaints than Mr. Clinton ever did that he is no Franklin Roosevelt — in policy or rhetoric. Roosevelt is celebrated by liberals for denouncing “economic royalists” and “unscrupulous moneychangers.” Yet his administration in 1933 also created an organization to attract businesses’ advice on measures to pull out of the Depression. That group still exists: it has evolved into the Business Council. And just as Mr. Obama has ratcheted up his own populist attacks against corporate self-interest and Wall Street’s return to business as usual, so did Roosevelt become more vocally populist as re-election neared and he faced demagogic opposition. That included the likes of Senator Huey Long of Louisiana, the radio broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin and a domestic Communist Party making inroads on the left, much like the Tea Party movement today on the far right. Still, Mr. Obama hardly seems likely to go as far as Roosevelt, who at one point swore to a top aide that he would “steal Long’s thunder.” In a recent interview, Mr. Obama acknowledged that Wall Street executives had not heeded his call to reform themselves “as much as I’d like.” But given an opening to excoriate them, he said instead, “You don’t want to paint with too broad a brush.” _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
