Obama was warned in the strongest terms not to visit or promote Solyndra, because the company was already in bad shape

Maybe he thought that all a company needed to succeed was a speech by himself.

From the Washington Post blog:

A Silicon Valley investor and senior administration officials warned the White House to reconsider having President Obama visit a solar start-up company because of its mounting financial problems, saying he might be embarrassed later.

“A number of us are concerned that the president is visiting Solyndra,” California investor and Obama fundraiser Steve Westly wrote to Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett in May 2010. “Many of us believe the company’s cost structure will make it difficult for them to survive long term…. I just want to help protect the president from anything that could result in negative or unfair press.”

The memo was among several copies of e-mails released Monday morning by Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating a government loan to the now-bankrupt company.

Obama’s Energy Department had provided Solyndra with a $535 million government-backed loan in 2009 and wanted to highlight the investment to show taxpayers how their stimulus dollars had been put to work. Westly said that if Obama proceeded with the visit, he should be careful about touting the company’s future.

“If it’s too late to change/postpone the meeting, the president should be careful about unrealistic/optimistic forecasts that could haunt him in the next 18 months if Solyndra hits the wall, files for bankruptcy, etc.

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Paul K. writes:

You wrote, “Maybe he thought that all a company needed to succeed was a speech by himself.”

I’m afraid that says it all. He really thinks that way: “And the President said ‘Let there be solar power,’ and there was solar power.”

LA replies:

I wasn’t saying it as a joke or hyperbole. I meant it literally. The statements I’ve been hearing from Obama and other Democrats have convinced me that economic and business reality does not exist for them. They think that society exists in order to provide goods, which is done through government spending. They literally do not know and do not care how business enterprises succeed or fail, how profits are made, how wealth is produced, how material goods appear. They think those things are just supposed to be there.

I’ve often said that liberals take for granted the existence of the goods of this world, and are only concerned with distributing them equally. The first part of that statement was more true than I realized.

Jim C. writes:

What Larry is referring to is the Obama cargo cult.

Kristor writes:

“What Larry is referring to is the Obama cargo cult.” Jim C. has nailed it. Show up in your black suit, with shoes shined, go through the motions you saw the big men performing, say the words that they said, and the goods will drop from the sky.

Obama was warned by a big man who knew how the world works that incantations and magic spells weren’t going to cut it. But he’s been living in a liberal bubble his whole life, and in that liberal bubble, incantations and magic spells are the only things that are both comprehensible to the liberal and that generate results. Such as the magic ritual in which, to fix the water heater, you pick up the telephone and invoke a big man named Eric or Steve (or, these days, Jose) to come fix it. His spells had always worked for Obama, and spectacularly so; what reason did he have to heed the warnings from the big man in California?

No doubt some atheist will write you to ask how liberal cargo cult incantations and massive games of “Let’s pretend transfer payments work” are different from the Mass. The difference is categorical. The cargo cultists, and magicians generally, perform their rites the way that Eric, Steve and Jose wield their wrenches: as tools to effect their will upon material reality. The priest in consecrating the elements of the Mass on the other hand is praying to God that the Divine will be effected, and offers to God with the wine and the host his own body, life and soul—and those of the congregation—to be a living, willing sacrifice. The priest effectually offers up the whole world to God, to be itself the instrument of his Will. The magician tries to control the gods, and the world. The two procedures are diametrically different.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 03, 2011 03:27 PM | Send