MR. BUFFETT HAS SOME EXPLAINING TO DO:

Can Obama Regain the Backing of Big Business? (Mark Halperin, Jun. 14, 2010, TIME)

Like Bill Clinton in 1992, candidate Obama had stronger-than-usual support as a Democrat from both Wall Street and Main Street business leaders. Now, amid both the endgame of the struggle for financial regulation and the Gulf oil crisis, the President's alienation from the top level of the private sector leaves him weakened with Congress and the public, and as a political force.

Governing during a period of serial global and national challenges of almost unprecedented scale — to which he has largely responded with government action of unprecedented scale — Obama was bound to make enemies in some camps from which he drew support in 2008. Labor unions, journalists, independents, antiwar activists and liberals are just some of the groups that have more or less turned on the man in whom they once invested so many hopes. But it is the apparent break with Big Business that is at once most pronounced and, at the moment, potentially most consequential.

The view of many of the nation's best-compensated executives is that Obama knows little or nothing about the importance of the free market or how it works.

All you need to know about Mr. Obama and economics is that his one great moment came when he supported W's solution to the credit crisis.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 14, 2010 6:10 AM