The audacity of Barack Obama's populist posturing

It's becoming the Democrats' theme for the 2010 elections: populism. My column today pokes some holes in that balloon:

But the image of Obama as a reformer is at odds with his behavior as president. He signed a massive spending bill that benefited the biggest companies, ratcheted up Wall Street bailouts, signed a tobacco regulation bill written in part by the largest tobacco company, handed ownership of Chrysler to a union that had spent $4.9 million to help elect him president, rallied behind a porked-up climate bill that gave away tens of billions of dollars to the largest energy companies, and cut a backroom deal with the top drug industry lobbyists to get them on board with a health care plan derided by his own party's former leader as "a bailout for the insurance industry."