Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men, pushes the theme that the Obama administration is too cozy with Wall Street and industry in general. Republicans have also attacked the administration as too liberal.
At Politico, Ben Smith write: “These many critiques don’t really match up, and can’t all be true….But they’re congealing into the critique you’ll hear from the Republican nominee next year, which is that Obama is both too far left and captured by big business.”
It reminded of the health-care debate when liberal blogger Ed Kilgore wrote:
I think Smith and Kilgore are wrong. There’s nothing contradictory about being too much in favor of big government and too helpful to big business. Will Wilkinson at The Economist puts it well in an excellent blog post today on the current talk over class war:
During Mr Obama’s reign, the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street has been replaced with an open garage door you can drive a hybrid truck through.
Wilkinson cites the recent case of Obama bailout captain Jim Millstein cashing out. He then goes over Solyndra — hardly a case of Obama playing Robin Hood — and concludes: “It wouldn’t hurt, though, if more of us were to give up any illusions we may have about which side of the class war our favourite major political party is fighting on: probably not yours.”
