The Economist
Barack Obama and business
Starting to get along
Two cheers from business for the new commerce secretary
THE choice of John Bryson to be Barack Obama’s second commerce secretary has not gone down well with a certain sort of Republican senator, who notes that he embodies two of their pet hates: tree hugging and internationalism. Not only did he co-found the Natural Resources Defence Council, a green lobby group, he sits on an anti-climate-change committee of the, shudder, United Nations. This may make even tougher what was shaping up to be a tricky Senate approval, given earlier talk that Republicans would try to block any appointment as commerce secretary until three agreed bilateral trade deals currently becalmed in Congress are ratified.
Yet the president is likely to care more about the mostly positive reaction of business to his choice of Mr Bryson, a former boss of Edison, a California power company, and a reliable member of the corporate boardroom club at blue-chip firms such as Boeing and Disney. (Indeed, boardroom cronyism may have helped get him the job; he spent several years on the Boeing board alongside William Daley, Mr Obama’s newish chief of staff.) Despite his green credentials, Mr Bryson’s appointment was welcomed by Tom Donohue, head of the US Chamber of Commerce, who seldom finds anything praiseworthy in what Mr Obama does.
Mr Bryson may not be as exciting a choice as some of those who were said to be in the running for the job, notably Eric Schmidt of Google. He comes from an industry that is dull rather than entrepreneurial, though hopefully having seen the near bankruptcy of the electricity business in California ten years ago will make him a true believer in the campaign against bad regulation. But at least the leaders of corporate America have heard of him, which is more than could be said of the outgoing commerce secretary, Gary Locke.
Choosing a businessman, rather than a lawyer turned politician like Mr Locke, as commerce secretary is the latest in a series of moves by Mr Obama during the past year to repair relations with corporate America, which 12 months ago were frankly pretty awful. Wealthy bosses, not necessarily for the most public-spirited of reasons, welcomed his decision to extend the tax cuts introduced by George Bush. They were pleased that he showed more willingness to listen to them, rather than just pose for photographs, and noted that he had started to talk more about jobs, entrepreneurship, the cutting of red tape and the importance of manufacturing. Appointing well-known business leaders such as Jeffrey Immelt, boss of GE, and Steve Case, the founder of AOL, to advise him, respectively, on jobs and innovation also played well.
Of course, there are plenty of business people who dislike Mr Obama, dismissing him as a quasi-socialist, especially because of his health-care policies. But increasingly this seems more about politics than business. The critics are the overtly Republican sort of businessperson, of whom there are plenty, whereas the Democrat-leaning business leaders who a year ago feared they had backed the wrong man are coming back on side. Now if only Mr Obama can deliver those trade deals, two cheers from business may become three.
http://www.economist.com/node/18775265
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