Really! He’s not. As Daniel Henninger explains in his WSJ column today, Obama likes businesses (at least those willing to go along with his notions) and wants to make them his partners in the great remaking of America.
Lenin expropriated the business owners in Russia and had some of them executed. Obama isn’t like that at all. He wants to — and to a considerable extent has — buy the allegiance of high-profile businesses with government money and favors.
We must not confuse Obama’s willingness to use business executives as props with a belief in capitalism, which is not pro-business but rather pro-competition. Obama is gung-ho for crony capitalism and state capitalism, but laissez-faire capitalism gives the government no role in directing economic activity. He doesn’t like that at all.
