Obama showcases support from Romney’s equity peers

President Barack Obama delivers remarks on government reform, Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)

President Barack Obama’s deputies are fitting Gov. Mitt Romney up as a heartless and greedy investor, eager to strip-mine companies and throw workers onto the street.

He’s a “corporate raider who thinks outsourcing jobs, stripping down companies, and bankrupting them for profit represents the best of the free enterprise system,” Brad Woodhouse, the spokesman for the Democratic National Committee declared Jan. 12.

But on Tuesday Obama sat down with three of Romney’s professional peers whom he had recruited for his resume-boosting presidential “Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.”

The televised campaign-style event showed Obama listening and nodding as Romney’s peers offered him advice on how to spend taxpayers’ money.

But Obama’s investor-advisers aren’t free market Republicans, such as Mitt, who argues that his investments have helped create 110,000 jobs in the last 20 years.

Instead, they’re Democrats, and they include John Doerr, a senior partner at California-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Mark Gallogly, a co-founder chief of Centerbridge Partners.

The third, who has feet in both camps, is Richard Parsons. He’s the former chief of Time Warner, the current head of Citigroup — which got a huge federal bailout in 2009 — and a senior adviser at Providence Equity Partners.

Obama made sure to praise his own council Tuesday. “This has not been a show council. … It will pay off in terms of solidifying this recovery and allow us to move forward in a way where it actually translates into jobs,” he told the TV cameras.

But the TV image of Obama kibbitzing with the capitalists is much different from the image of Romney that was painted Jan. 16 by the DNC chairwoman, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Back then, a full 12 hours before Obama’s White House meeting, she described Romney as “a corporate raider for Bain Capital [whose mission] was never job creation — it was putting profits over people by bankrupting companies, outsourcing jobs and laying off workers.”

But these three investors at the White House Jan. 17 have shared with Obama some the wealth that they’re gained by using government to boost their investments, line their pockets and goose their social status.

John Doerr earned billions of dollars at the intersection of government and capitalism, for example, by donating to Democratic politicians while investing in green-tech companies that benefit from Democratic policies.

Doerr’s firm, California-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is one of the investors in Fisker Automative, a Finland-based auto company that got a $529 million loan guarantee from Obama’s administration. After the guarantee was confirmed, Fisker dropped plans to manufacture the autos in the United States.

But Doerr has given back by donating $171,400 to Democratic politicians since 2007.

He’s also given $100 to a single GOP politician in 2010.

The other partners at his firm have given back roughly $550,000 to Democratic politicians and groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Republicans got roughly $150,000 from the company since 2007. In 2007, Romney got $2,100 in a donation from one the firm’s partners.

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