Obama Twists Arms at BP, Setting Off a Debate on Tactics

[groovedaddy]

WASHINGTON — First there was General Motors, whose chief executive was summarily dismissed by the White House shortly before the government became the company’s majority shareholder. Chrysler was forced into a merger. At the banks that received government bailouts, executive pay was curbed; at insurance companies seeking to jack up premiums, scathing criticism led to rollbacks.

But President Obama’s successful move to force BP to establish a $20 billion compensation fund that the company will have no voice in allocating — just a down payment, the president insisted — may have been the most vivid example of what he recently called his determination to step in and do “what individuals couldn’t do and corporations wouldn’t do.”

With that display of raw arm-twisting, Mr. Obama reinvigorated a debate about the renewed reach of government power, or, alternatively, the power of government overreach. It is an argument that has come to define Mr. Obama’s first 18 months in office, and one that Mr. Obama clearly hopes to make a central issue in November’s midterm elections.

To Mr. Obama, this is all about rebalancing the books after two decades in which multinationals sometimes acted like mini-states beyond government reach, abetted by a faith in markets that, as Mr. Obama put it at Carnegie Mellon University a few weeks ago, “gutted regulations and put industry insiders in charge of industry oversight.” When Representative Joe L. Barton, the Texas Republican, opened hearings Thursday about the gulf oil gusher by accusing Mr. Obama of an unconstitutional “shakedown” of BP to create a “slush fund,” he was giving voice to an alternative narrative, a bubbling certainty in corporate suites that Mr. Obama, whenever faced with crisis that involves private-sector players, reveals himself to be viscerally antibusiness.

The reality, not surprisingly, is more complex.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/us/18assess.html?th&emc=th

[MineralMan]

1. So now he's "antibusiness." I thought he was a corporatist.

Which is it, you folks on the far left? Corporatist? Antibusiness? Something else?

I'm just so confused. :sarcasm:

[4lbs]

2. Ah, I see. Holding corporations responsible for their screwups and poor planning is "antibusiness".

Gee, Corporate CEOs, I guess the freewheeling days of Bush, where you could do anything you want, without fear of scrutiny or accountability are over.

Too bad that you must actually consider what if things don't go as planned.