WASHINGTON — Under bright spring sunshine, the mood at the White House was celebratory last week as President Obama announced an agreement on new rules to force drastic improvements in the fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions of the nation's cars and trucks.
But what made the Rose Garden audience unusual was not the environmentalists and liberal Democrats, who have long supported such requirements. The surprise was the presence of executives from the world's 10 largest automobile makers, most of whom had fought long and hard to avoid tougher standards. Like other businesses, however, they had joined with the Obama administration to help craft new rules for their industry.
The lions-and-lambs quality of the gathering suggested that a new paradigm was developing in the relationship between government and business.
In the space of only a week or so, there was significant movement not only on vehicle fuel efficiency but also on similarly contentious issues including reducing greenhouse gas emissions by factories and power plants, subjecting tobacco to new health and safety supervision, and overhauling healthcare coverage.
In each case, the forward movement took place with significant industry participation and input.
"It's no secret that these are folks who've occasionally been at odds for years, even decades," Obama said, remarking on the diversity of the crowd gathered for the auto standards announcement. "In fact, some of the groups here have been embroiled in lawsuits against one another."
Although he was talking about the environmentalists and automakers, the observation applied equally to stakeholders on the other issues, who have long been mired in stalemate and bitter conflict and now seem to have opted for at least some cooperation.
On each of these issues, final agreement on new policies is months away. And as they get deeper into the specifics, the old adversaries could come to blows again.
But the relationship between government and business appears to be undergoing a fundamental restructuring, similar to what happened during the New Deal of the 1930s and the deregulatory push of the Reagan administration in the 1980s, said Robert N. Stavins, a professor of business and government at Harvard University.
Those shifts have been fueled by deep economic troubles accompanied by a sharp change in national political control, leading to a vastly different philosophy about how Washington should interact with corporations, he said.
