PRESIDENT OBAMA has endured much criticism of his legislative skills from his fellow progressives. His conciliatory approach has been compared unfavorably with Franklin D. Roosevelt’s gleeful pugnacity and Lyndon B. Johnson’s relentless arm-twisting. His willingness to strike deals with corporations has been tagged “business as usual.” Many progressives, frustrated over the past three years, have concluded that the political system is fundamentally broken because corporate power has been allowed to suffocate popular liberal policies.

But the Supreme Court’s upholding of Mr. Obama’s health care law reminds us that the president’s approach has achieved significant results. If his liberal critics paused to assess how he achieved such results, they would not see a system paralyzed by corporations; they would see that the most liberal reforms in more than 40 years have been brought about because Mr. Obama views corporate power as a force to bargain with, not an enemy to vanquish.
The necessity of corporate support for, or at least acquiescence to, liberal policies is not a new development in the history of American liberalism. Indeed it has been one of its hallmarks. 

Roosevelt may be remembered for his combativeness toward corporations; he famously said, “I welcome their hatred.” But he said that in 1936, only after key New Deal legislation had passed with the help of the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association. 

Early on, Roosevelt was quite adept at bargaining with corporations. In his first 100 days, to attract corporate support for the National Industrial Recovery Act, he won collective bargaining, minimum wages and maximum hours in exchange for a temporary suspension of antitrust law, so businesses could fix prices. To establish the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1934, he made concessions to Wall Street that scrapped statutory requirements in favor of regulatory flexibility. The following year, to allow the Federal Reserve to better conduct monetary policy, he gave bankers representation on the policy committee.
Johnson also found little value in warring with corporations. He won a Keynesian tax cut in early 1964, defeating budget-conscious conservatives, thanks to a broad coalition that included corporations. He attracted business support to back his first antipoverty bill by junking plans to promote family farming and push businesses to hire long-term unemployed people. He created the Transportation Department, in 1966, only after exempting resistant shipping interests from its jurisdiction. He incited a new era of environmental protection, increasing federal responsibility for cleaning air and water, while defusing corporate opposition by trading away federal pollution standards. 

Democratic presidents typically pay dearly when they choose to fight corporations instead of deal with them. Jimmy Carter sapped his political capital in the first two years of his presidency by trying to pass, with belligerent anticorporate rhetoric, a National Energy Act that would reduce our dependence on oil. He gave two major national addresses intended to rally the public and fend off critics’ attacks. At a town hall, he lashed out at oil companies for enjoying “a position of privilege in our country for too long” and having undue influence in Congress. But these confrontational tactics failed to rouse enough public ire to trump that influence, and Mr. Carter settled for a far smaller energy bill than he originally demanded. 

Or consider President Bill Clinton. In 1993, his health care task force largely resisted meeting with insurance lobbyists as it drafted legislation. In turn, the insurers didn’t wait for the legislation to be finalized before embarking on a vicious advertising campaign. When the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, tried to belittle that effort, fund-raising for the insurance lobby skyrocketed and its advertising budget quintupled. Mr. Clinton, his bully pulpit diminished, couldn’t get Congress to vote on his bill. He suffered such a humiliating defeat that his ability to enact any other progressive reform was severely crippled. 

The realities of corporate power cannot be wished away by any president, no matter how tough the talk, because corporations can and will spend freely during the legislative process. And when they are unified, they have the resources to dominate debate. Even the progressive holy grail — a constitutional amendment banning corporate campaign donations — would not stop that.
BUT when corporations are divided or mollified, reformers can breathe. The president can be heard. Business owners can be convinced that they will remain profitable. The dim prospect of perpetual gridlock can be trumped by the allure of regulatory certainty. 

Just look at how Mr. Obama handled the health care law. Recently released e-mail exchanges between the White House and the pharmaceutical lobby, which detail a path of compromises that won the drug industry’s support for the Affordable Care Act, certainly look more like “business as usual” than “change.” The e-mails include a White House promise of a “direct line of communication” to lobbyists, along with a suggestion to “stay quiet” about an agreement that buried a proposal for cheap drug imports. 

But the e-mail trove is a case study in how liberal change becomes reality. The key to President Obama’s success was enlisting drug companies to pay for pro-reform advertisements. He also persuaded health insurers to forgo a major opposition campaign — by accepting the industry’s proposal for the individual mandate to buy private insurance and dropping plans for a competing public insurance option. As the final vote neared, the United States Chamber of Commerce and other organizations spent millions of dollars on advertisements attacking “Obamacare.” But the pharmaceutical industry effectively matched the chamber’s money in supportive advertisements, blunting the impact of the criticism. 

Health care was not an anomaly for Mr. Obama. His original stimulus package never faced well-financed conservative opposition in part because the United States Chamber of Commerce backed the business tax cuts in the package. We got a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau after Mr. Obama put Wall Street at ease by resisting proposals to cap the size of banks. New standards lifting average fuel-efficiency goals were set once the White House accepted the automakers’ demand for a review in 2021 and flexibility regarding light trucks. The food safety bill empowered the Food and Drug Administration to recall tainted items but won industry support by dropping a ban on bisphenol A, or BPA, a chemical used in food and beverage containers. 

The necessity of forging coalitions with corporations is understandably difficult for progressives to accept. Every time it happens, corporations seem to quickly go back to their usual tricks. They lobby to weaken enforcement. They litigate to have rules overturned. They abandon politicians who risked compromise for them. Corporations are exasperating, irritating and untrustworthy partners.
But most of the time politics is exasperating and irritating, not euphoric and cathartic. As Roosevelt himself told a group of dissatisfied youth activists in 1940, “if you ever sit here you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time.” 

As much as Roosevelt enjoyed pugnacity, he also understood its limits. Because Mr. Obama heeded this lesson of liberal history, there was a health care law for the Supreme Court to uphold. 


Bill Scher is the executive editor of LiberalOasis.com and host of the LiberalOasis Radio Show podcast.