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On Sunday, after he learned he'd won that day's Democratic presidential primary in Maine but before his appearance on CBS's "60 Minutes," Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) sat down at the keyboard of his computer to write an e-mail. Not to a media consultant or a delegate counter, but to banker Robert Wolf, chief executive of UBS (UBS, news, msgs) Group for the Americas.
The two men exchanged notes about the Senate-passed economic stimulus package and that weekend's G-7 economic summit, Wolf says.
A banker as Obama's pen pal? Hard to believe, given the senator's liberal image. But in between rallies and airplane flights on the campaign trail, Obama has also taken time to consult on the economy with billionaire Warren Buffett, whose support of rolling back the Bush tax cuts Obama often cites in his stump speeches.
- Talk back: Would Obama be bad for business?
Obama has also been in touch with former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, who endorsed the freshman senator in January.
"When I sat down with him, I found him to be unbelievably refreshing and smart and thoughtful," says Wolf, who first met Obama at the offices of financier George Soros. The UBS chief has gone on to raise more than $1 million for the Obama campaign.
The rest of corporate America may not be persuaded as easily.
After all, Obama is hardly a shoo-in for the C-suite set: He's got a scant three-year record on the national stage, and he wants to roll back the Bush tax cuts that benefit many of the people running big American companies.
Plus, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce gives him the lowest rating of any of the three major contenders for the presidency, behind Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
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So what would an Obama presidency look like for business?
"It would be a pragmatic, center-left administration," says Democratic political strategist Steve McMahon, who is unaligned with a presidential candidate this year. "He's been pretty clear that business would have a seat at the table, but business wouldn't be able to buy all the chairs."
Obama's record in the Senate is thin, but it does hold some indicators of where he might go as president.
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Obama's plan for the economyAustan Goolsbee, a University of Chicago professor and an adviser to Barack Obama, addresses questions about the candidate's economic vision.
Obama voted for a free-trade pact with Peru that contained provisos to protect the Peruvian environment and Peruvian labor. That's popular stuff with the American left but hard to take if you're a U.S. business owner who wants costs to stay low in your new Peru operation.
And in a reflection of the Democratic Party's drift away from pure free-trade positions, Obama says he would look to amend the North America Free Trade Agreement to add similar protections to the Clinton-era pact.
Continued: A style that's less confrontational
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