“There are no guarantees in the business world about success and failure. That is just the way business works,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week. He was answering a question about the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing firm, and what the event meant for President Obama’s economic policies. “You cannot measure the success based on one company or the other,” Carney finished. Department of Energy spokesman Damien LaVera disagreed, instead declaring the Obama administration’s $535 million loan guarantee to the now-bankrupt Solyndra a victory for the White House. “The project that we supported succeeded,” said LaVera. “The facility was producing the product it said it would produce, and consumers were buying the product.”
“We have been fighting about the proper size and role of government since the day the Framers gathered in Philadelphia,” Obama told University of Michigan graduates last spring. So, is it the proper role of government to act as a venture capitalist? Obama’s re-election may well depend on Americans’ willingness to swallow the tale that Obama’s investment in Solyndra was a “success.” It is the perfect case study of Obama’s economic vision for the United States.
