Pivoting to Populism: Obama talks about his brand of populism with WP reporter

[DeepModem Mom]

Washington Post: Pivoting to Populism
By Ruth Marcus
Thursday, August 7, 2008; Page A21


Barack Obama answers a question at a campaign event in Elkhart, Ind. (Joe Raymond/AP)

.... (O)n board his campaign plane en route to a town hall meeting here, I ask Obama about this louder populist backbeat. Does a message that might resonate with Hillary Clinton Democrats risk alienating Republicans or independent voters? "I don't think people are disturbed by that argument," he says, as long as they "feel like you are mindful that the market is still the best way to allocate resources productively, that some of the excesses of the '60s and '70s may have hampered economic growth, that we don't want to return to marginal tax rates of 60 or 70 percent."

But, I point out, there wasn't a lot of that sort of free-market talk in Obama's Ohio remarks. "The people are hurting right now," Obama replies, adding that his energy plan emphasizes job creation through private enterprise. "We've become so accustomed to thinking that there's two ways of looking at the economy. Either you don't give a hoot about what's happening in the daily lives of people, so you don't talk about it . . . or conversely, you are, you know, out there raging against the machine."

Obama argues that his brand of populism is not aimed as much at frustration with big business as with disappointment with dysfunctional government. "When you hear me talk about people versus the powerful, my populism is built most powerfully around the sense that government is nonresponsive to these folks," he says. "They're probably less angry at Wall Street for making money and angrier at Washington for not just setting up some basic rules of the road."

Are oil companies, I ask, more morally culpable than other industries that would not be subject to Obama's proposed tax? "Not in the view of most economists," Obama replies. "I'm well aware of the argument about singling out oil companies rather than soda pop manufacturers."

Yes, but what does Obama himself believe? "I think oil companies are amoral. They want to make as much money as they can for their shareholders, which is what corporations do," he says. "The difference is the nature of the kind of outsized profits they make that may have no relationship to their investments or their production. The fact, for example, that the shortage of refinery capacity could actually increase their profits so the less they invest the more they make indicates that you are not dealing with someone making widgets out there."...

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