I don't think the guy has to worry about Obama trying to raise taxes on the wealthy, etc. I like how (in para 2 below) he points out a 44/43 split in public opinion as proving anything about the subject of deregulation and I'd also like to know how much "earlier this week" it was released. Linda
"How Free Should A Market Be?" from the NYTimes
Portion below; whole thing here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/weekinreview/05berenson.html
Doug Schoen, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton for six years, said that should Mr. Obama win next month, he should not mistake his election for a mandate for sharply higher taxes on the wealthy or major government expansion. “The polling I’ve done shows that people are anti-Republican, not pro-left, not pro-redistribution,” he said. “They’re ever more skeptical of Washington.”
For example, in the poll by CBS News released earlier this week, 44 percent of Americans said businesses now faced “too much” or “the right amount” of regulation, compared to 43 percent who said they faced too little. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 42 percent said Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, should be made permanent, while 36 percent said they should be allowed to expire over the next several years.
Most strikingly, 34 percent described themselves as conservative, compared to only 20 percent as liberal. Those figures have hardly changed since September 2000, when 32 percent described themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal.
Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, said the financial crisis has benefited Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates. But Mr. Gingrich added that if Mr. Obama is elected and presses too hard for liberal policies, Democrats may be repudiated by voters in 2010, just as they were in 1994, two years after Mr. Clinton was elected president and offered proposals for national health insurance and higher energy taxes that failed in Congress.
* * * * Later in article
But, in a sign of the opposition that Democrats will face as they try to strengthen regulation, Mr. Ruder said that he did not think regulatory reform would be easy to implement, even in the financial sector. Even after receiving massive government aid this year, banks may fight stronger government oversight next year, he said.
The banking and finance industries are major political donors and powerful lobbying forces in Washington. Lawmakers who voted for the bailout received substantially more in contributions over their careers from the finance, insurance and real estate industries than those who voted against it, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks political contributions.
“I’m scared about the next year but I’m very optimistic we’ll come out of this in good shape,” he said. “We very well may come out of this horrible situation with a better version of American capitalism — it’ll be a little tamer; it’ll be a little more regulated.”
“But this country is built on an appetite for risk,” he added. “We don’t want to be France.”
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