How in the world did anyone get that idea? Perhaps the feeling set in sometime between the President’s public trashing of the Chrysler bond holders and his use of the insurer Wellpoint as a piñata to pass ObamaCare. Or maybe it was sometime after his Administration’s fifth or sixth tax increase proposal, its disdain until recently for trade promotion, and its unleashing of new regulations across any industry you want to name.

For a summary of the Administration’s antibusiness agenda, consult the Business Roundtable’s recent 54-page compendium. But don’t read it before you go to bed because you’ll wake up with nightmares if you’re an employer.

Our guess is that the timing of this White House campaign has a lot to do with the Roundtable’s broadside, which has shaken even some of the President’s media friends. When even Newsweek columnists and The Atlantic start to turn on this Administration, you know things are bad.

Another motivator must be this week’s Washington Post story detailing that Wall Street and the financial industry have stopped writing as many checks to Democratic House and Senate candidates after two years of White House banker bashing. Big Labor can’t pay for every TV ad, and nothing concentrates the political mind so much as the lack of campaign cash.

However, our favorite line from yesterday’s Politico.com story is this one: “And it is more than just politics: Obama’s aides believe confidence in the general direction of White House policy has an effect on the willingness of corporations to hire, invest and push the economy toward a more solid recovery.” You think?

However late the revelation, we suppose it’s progress if Democrats are figuring out that business confidence is crucial to nurturing a fragile economic recovery into a durable expansion. U.S. companies have an estimated $2 trillion in cash that they could deploy to create new jobs or buy equipment, but they aren’t about to do so until they know what their costs will be. We warned the White House about this early on when we wrote about the dangers of a “capital strike.”

The problem for Mr. Obama at this stage is that business will need more than words to conclude there’s been a real political change. He’ll have to make some major policy shifts, such as calling off next year’s big tax increase. More important still, no one in business will trust any of this as long as Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid run Congress.