About that Anti-Business President

After highlighting the many pro-business aspects of the economy-boosting moves that the Obama admin has proposed this week, Ezra Klein writes (insightfully IMHO):

...it's worth thinking harder about the idea -- propagated by many on the right and some in the business community -- that this president is somehow anti-business. The health-care reform bill bends over backward to preserve each and every private industry currently overcharging us for our care. The Obama campaign publicly supported the bank bailout and then repelled the populist measures to really hammer banker pay when they got into office. The financial reform bill didn't break up the banks, set leverage requirements in statute or do any of a number of other things that would've really hurt the financial industry. The auto bailout was designed to preserve the existence of America's auto industry, and even the Economist has admitted that the Obama administration did everything in its power to "restore both firms to health and then get out as quickly as possible." The various stimulus measures have been designed to directly support businesses or indirectly support the people who those businesses rely on.

The point isn't that all of these policies were good. Some of them weren't. The point is that the constant accusation that this White House is somehow anti-business, or deaf to the corporate community's concerns, is a fiction of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. There's a good argument to be made, I think, that this White House is too focused on business, but it's annoying to have to frame it as a boldly counterintuitive point, rather than as an obvious conclusion based on their raft of policy initiatives meant to save, help or otherwise improve the position of corporate America.