Opinion

Why biz fears Bam 2

‘And because it’s a world market, the fact that we’re doing more here in the United States doesn’t necessarily help us because even US oil companies, they’re selling that oil on a worldwide market. “They’re not keeping it just for us. And that means that if there’s rising demand around the world then the prices are going to up.”

If you think that inane statement (yes, prices may go up, but much less if we produce more oil at home) is coming from a college student still grappling with the law of supply and demand, you’d be wrong.

It’s President Obama, as he veered off his teleprompter last Thursday to attack oil companies in order to make the case that he has done all he can to keep gas prices from rising.

Forget that class warfare has been a favorite Obama theme or that he’s calling for more taxes on oil companies as the price of gasoline is rising to $5 a gallon and threatening the nation’s weak economic recovery. Also forget that this is a well-educated man whose language, at least, suggests that he skipped elementary econ on his way to a Harvard law degree.

The question that has both captivated and scared many business leaders over the last three years of Obama’s first term is why he displays such a tin ear for free markets — either by ignoring them as a way to promote economic growth or by mischaracterizing them as a way to achieve his big-government agenda.

The answer, at least according to business leaders who voted for the president back in 2008 and have worked with his economic team since, should give anyone pause who thinks a second Obama term would be good for the US economy.

It comes down to resumé. This president, with his years in academia and community organizing, has a thin one when it comes to the economy, and the people who advise him on economic matters aren’t much better.

As one top business executive who deals with Obama’s economic team put it recently: “When I ask my business community friends who are Democrats, ‘How can you vote for someone you would never hire?’ they just shrug their shoulders. As far as the people who work for the president, dealing with his economic team is like dealing with college students. Their level of naivete is off the charts.”

The Obama paradox is that he gave just the opposite impression to so many business leaders who supported him back in 2008. They may have ignored everything from his very liberal voting record as US senator to his associations with various players of the far left. But that’s only because, at least in private meetings, candidate Obama seemed so level-headed when it came to the economy as the 2008 financial collapse loomed.

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink assured me before Obama became president that Obama was “a moderate,” and Fink wasn’t alone in this belief among the nation’s top business leaders. That’s because, on the 2008 campaign trail, Obama didn’t preach to them the class warfare that, three years later, has made many of his business supporters into critics. There was little mention of a vast expansion of government through the health-care mandate or the taxes to be levied against small businesses and wealth creators.

What Obama preached, instead, was moderation, saying there’d be no broader agenda before Americans got back to work.

We know how that turned out.

Many on the right would tell you that Obama hoodwinked the business community to gain its support. Maybe. But consider (and this is coming from people who voted for Obama): Outside community organizing, Obama has little if any real world experience. As a law-school professor, he was an academic who never had to meet a payroll. As a legislator, he never had to balance a budget or deal with business.

This president doesn’t know any better, and as a result, in office, his economic advice came from the people he trusted. Such economically experienced moderates as Bill Daley and Larry Summers were shown the door, while liberal Chicago lawyer Valerie Jarrett has had his ear on many pressing economic issues.

So maybe Obama really is an economic moderate who leans on trusted left-wing advisers, as presidents often do to walk him through difficult matters. Or maybe he’s an ideologue looking to remake the country’s economy to resemble Europe’s. Or maybe he’s a combination.

Anyway you look at it, the big losers are the American people.

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.