Cool toward business': Financial Times endorses Obama

Over the weekend the Financial Times, a UK-based world business newspaper, put its support behind President Obama. Though the endorsement from the paper's editorial board notes that Obama has been "cool toward business," it cites the administration's response to Sandy as a major tipping point.

From the endorsement:

... Mr Obama has often been curiously aloof. He has been notably cool toward business. The self-proclaimed agent of change has at crucial points failed to exercise leadership. He declined to endorse the Simpson-Bowles bipartisan panel’s recommendations on cutting the ballooning federal deficit. The White House blames the implacable wall of opposition from Republicans in Congress. However, Mr Obama himself commissioned the report. The US now faces a “fiscal cliff” on January 1, which could trigger swingeing spending cuts and tax increases that could plunge the country back into recession. ...

As in his response to Hurricane Sandy, Mr Obama has shown that purposeful government can be part of the solution rather than the problem. Four years on from the financial crisis, with extreme inequality an affront to the American dream, there remains a need for intelligent, reformist governance. Mr Obama, his presidency defined by the economic crisis, looks the better choice.