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“I want to dispel any notion we want to inhibit your success,” President Obama told 20 CEOs this morning, according to a source in the room. “We want to be boosters because when you do well, America does well.”
Do we really need to go down the Memory Hole at this point?
Sure why not.
Here’s Barack Obama on the campaign trail, in February of 2008:
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
There’s this quote from an attorney who deposed Chrysler’s president in May of 2009:
“It became clear to us that Chrysler does not see the wisdom of terminating 25 percent of its dealers… It really wasn’t Chrysler’s decision. They are under enormous pressure from the President’s automotive task force.”
“My administration,” the president told bank CEOs in April of 2009, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”
Obama as quoted by the New York Times in March of 2009 on AIG bonuses:
“I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry,” Mr. Obama said, his voice reaching a peak seven days after learning of the bonuses given to employees of the American International Group. “What I want to do, though, is channel our anger in a constructive way.”
Obama during the BP oil spill:
“I was down there a month ago, before most of these talkin’ heads were even paying attention to the gulf. A month ago…I was meeting with fishermen down there, standin’ in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. and I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminare, we talk to these folks because they potentially…have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.”
Obama in April of 2010, in the middle of a speech on Wall Street “reform” blurted out, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”
In June of 2008, Jim Geraghty spotted this telling passage in a book by David Mendell titled Obama: From Promise to Power:
“[Obama] always talked about the New Rochelle train, the trains that took commuters to and from New York City, and he didn’t want to be on one of those trains every day,” said Jerry Kellman, the community organizer who enticed Obama to Chicago from his Manhattan office job. “The image of a life, not a dynamic life, of going through the motions… that was scary to him.”
And then there was this classic bit by Michelle Obama on the campaign trail:
“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”
And of course, all of these additional examples of businesses the president has demonized. Or as Doug Ross wrote, “Unlike Tricky Dick Nixon, Obama Wears His Enemies List On His Sleeve.”
“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”
The sad thing is that this is extraordinarily bad advice for the young.
Not that corporate law and hedge-fund management are wonderful places for bright young people. These areas have their own problems. Even Justice Scalia complained that too many of the best and brightest in this country are going into law.
But “working for the community” is no future either. I live near a college town and I see many bright, eager, entrepreneurial, young people who believe the only way they can make a difference is through social services and non-profit organizations. The truth that these young people never learn is that creating jobs and growing businesses are some of the best things that you can do for your community. If you make money, there is nothing to stop you from feeding the poor or saving the world or doing whatever else you want with it.
The problem with Michelle Obama is that she, like many on the left, separate the “money making industry” from the “helping industry”. The implication is that making money is morally wrong. (Of course, this advice is frequently given by those who make their money off the charity of others.) Because many young people have heard no alternative set of values, they are deliberately crippling their careers and their businesses. The community suffers as a result.
The past is that past, Mr. Driscoll! Let’s not dwell on such quaint notions that I said in the past. This is about building a better and more prosperous America in the future. This is, what, my 57th meeting with CEOs and there are only two more meetings to go? I am very pro-business. You need to make more money so that I can find different ways to spend it. How is my social, uh, uh, programs going to survive without the important contributions of CEOs, Mr. Driscoll? I am very pro-business. Let’s move forward as a nation, as red states and blue states, and get America moving again.
The irony is that for people who eschewed the greedy corporate life, Barry and Michelle do pretty damn well for themselves (on the taxpayers dime.) Back when I still smoked, I knew a lot of people who told me they had quit smoking, but as it turned out they still smoked them, they just quit BUYING them. B & M didn’t quit the wealth-seeking life, they just quit the part about working for stuff.
Did I say “irony”? I think I meant “hypocriscy.”
“…when you do well, America does well” doesn’t strike me as all that different from the misquote of Engine Charly Wilson of GM in 1952: “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country”. That quote used to be held up as the epitome of self-interested corporate cluelessness; now it’s just another pearl of wisdom from the progressive President. Amazing how times change!
What? He wants to dispel, he wants to be a booster? He didn’t say he could/would do it. And besides, it isn’t the CEOs who get White House invitations who are concerned. It’s the small businesspeople and CEOs of the non-politically connected corporations. With this administration, you know if you get a White House invitation, you’re getting a cash door prize for being a friend.
Yes, it’s sort of ironic that egalitarian socialist impulses and rhetoric often lead, in practice, to policies which favor the biggest, richest, most politically-connected business interests. Tigerhawk, whom I believe is the CFO of a non-giant business:
“My morning wish: That when Barack Obama decides he needs the advice of the business “community” (an abuse of the word “community” if there ever was one), he consult somebody other than “top CEOs.” Most if not all of these companies have reduced their U.S. headcount in the last two years. Worse, many of these CEOs are too political and too removed from details to explain to the president, with a painful and granular itemization, how his regulatory policies are stifling the animal spirits of American enterprise. Which, of course, most big companies do not have in the first place.”
http://tigerhawk.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-whereabouts-and-note-on-president-os.html
I will say that, given the forgiving nature off the American people, Obama could get away with this, long-term, if he figures out how to triangulate convincingly enough to win over the swing voters. Remember Bill Clinton got away with his whopper before business leaders in Houston back in 1994, telling them “I also think I raised your taxes too much,” in response to the outcry over the ’93 tax hikes.
The problem is while Clinton was the master at saying what the audience wanted to hear with no sense of guilt or remorse over his statement being at odds with his core beliefs, Obama seemed to get violently ill last week at even having to talk about compromising with the Republicans on the Bush tax cuts. A president who can’t even fake lying about moving to the middle might be a bit of the transparency Obama was promising his administration would display, but it either means he’s going to spend the next two years coming across as an uncomfortable fraud to pretty much all voters, or he’s going to find the task so distasteful he’ll throw in the towel and go back to his true loves on the left, and hope he can rekindle his 2008 campaign mojo to woo back the swing voters in 2012.