Winston Churchill once moaned about the long, dishonourable tradition in politics that sees commerce as a cow to be milked or a dangerous tiger to be shot. Businesses are the generators of the wealth on which incomes, taxation and all else depends; \u201cthe strong horse that pulls the whole cart\u201d\u009d, as Churchill put it. No sane leader of a country would want businesspeople to think that he was against them, especially at a time when confidence is essential for the recovery.<\/p>\n
From this perspective, Barack Obama already has a lot to answer for. A president who does so little to counter the idea that he dislikes business is, self-evidently, a worryingly negligent chief executive. No matter that other Western politicians have publicly played with populism more dangerously, from France\u2019s \u201claissez-faire is dead\u201d\u009d president, Nicolas Sarkozy, to Britain\u2019s \u201ccapitalism kills competition\u201d\u009d business secretary, Vince Cable (see article); no matter that talk on the American right about Mr Obama being a socialist is rot; no matter that Wall Street\u2019s woes are largely of its own making. The evidence that American business thinks the president does not understand Main Street is mounting<\/p>\n