Democrat Billionaire Mort Zuckerman on Obama

From the Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Zuckerman maintains that America will solve its problems over the long haul—"I am not somebody who's pessimistic about this country. I have had a life that's been better than my fantasies," he says—but he's certainly pessimistic about the current administration. That began shortly after inauguration day in 2009.

At that time he supported Mr. Obama's call for heavy spending on infrastructure. "But if you look at the make-up of the stimulus program," says Mr. Zuckerman, "roughly half of it went to state and local municipalities, which is in effect to the municipal unions which are at the core of the Democratic Party." He adds that "the Republicans understood this" and it diminished the chances for bipartisan legislating.

Then there was health-care reform: "Eighty percent of the country wanted them to get costs under control, not to extend the coverage. They used all their political capital to extend the coverage. I always had the feeling the country looked at that bill and said, 'Well, he may be doing it because he wants to be a transformational president, but I want to get my costs down!'"

Mr. Zuckerman recalls reports of Mr. Obama consulting various historians on the qualities of a transformational president. "But remember, transformations can go up and they can go down."

Now comes the latest fight over Mr. Obama's jobs plan, which has as its centerpiece a tax increase on the wealthy with obvious populist appeal. Mr. Zuckerman supports raising taxes on the rich but says such a proposal cannot be taken seriously unless it's paired with other measures to grow the economy and restrain deficit spending. He also wonders why, if the president wanted to get a plan enacted, he didn't begin with private bipartisan discussions with House and Senate leaders, instead of another address to a joint session of Congress.

"Even if you want to do this to revive your support in the base, to revive your credibility on the issues of the economy and jobs, which has fallen off the table, this isn't going to accomplish it. Another speech from this guy? The country knows this is just another speech. They understand it almost instantaneously, and his numbers have continued to go down for that reason. What the country wanted was some way of coming up with a solution."

The only solution Mr. Zuckerman sees now to juice the economy "is to broaden the tax base and simplify and lower tax [rates]. To me that will be as close to revenue-neutral as you're going to have so it isn't going to be seen as a budget buster." . . .

"Reagan surprised me," says Mr. Zuckerman. "He got the point of every argument. . . . He was very decisive. And everybody loved working for him. They followed his lead because they really respected his decisiveness and his instincts."

'I was not a Republican and I was not an admirer of his before I knew him," continues Mr. Zuckerman. "And you know, Harry Truman had a wonderful definition for the presidency. He said the president has to be someone who can persuade the American people to do what they don't want to do and to like it. And that's what you have to do. Somebody like Reagan had that authority. He was liked so much and he had a kind of moral authority. That's what this president has lost." . . .