Doug Mills/The New York Times  President Obama, who in a sense campaigned against corporate America, spoke to a group of leading executives on Wednesday.  WASHINGTON — After a campaign that drove a deep wedge between them, President Obama is now trying to rebuild relations with the business community in hopes of enlisting it in his showdown with Republicans in Congress over the looming fiscal crisis.  Through phone calls, White House invitations and old-fashioned political flattery, Mr. Obama has dispensed with some of the populist language of the campaign trail to appeal to corporate America’s palpable desire for certainty. In groups and one by one, the president is making a case to business leaders that siding with him will put the nation back on a firm fiscal footing and unleash the economy.  “What’s holding us back right now, ironically, is a lot of stuff that’s going on in this town,” Mr. Obama told the Business Roundtable, a group of corporate leaders, on Wednesday. “And I know that many of you have come down here to try to see, is there a way that we can break through the logjam and go ahead and get things done? And I’m here to tell you that nobody wants to get this done more than me.”  White House officials have been encouraged by what they describe as a more positive reaction than expected. Many chief executives who met with Mr. Obama privately at the White House last week told him they would go along with his proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy. And several have come out publicly for the plan as long as there is also an effort to tame the growth of entitlement spending.  Frederick W. Smith, the chief executive of FedEx and a supporter of Mitt Romney’s, said it was “a lot of mythology” that “you’ll kill jobs” by raising tax rates on the wealthy. Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, called Mr. Obama’s deficit reduction plans “very credible” and said that he “wouldn’t preclude” higher tax rates on higher income. Randall Stephenson, the chief executive of AT&T and another Romney supporter, called for “a compromise involving an increase in both tax rates” and “significant steps to reform entitlements and rein in federal spending.”  The White House hopes such statements help crack Republican solidarity.  “There are a lot of people in there who support the Republican Congress, who were ‘super PAC’ donors to Mitt Romney, yet they want a solution here,” David Plouffe, the president’s senior adviser, said after the Business Roundtable visit. “A lot of them have special influence in the Republican Party, and if they’re telling Republican leaders and members that they have to compromise, that’s going to have a real effect.”  Still, plenty of business leaders oppose Mr. Obama’s plans, and Republicans countered Wednesday by releasing comments from small-business owners saying that higher tax rates would stifle their firms. And even those who have signaled support for Mr. Obama’s stance on taxes are also pressing Democrats to rein in spending.  During a closed question session after Mr. Obama’s speech Wednesday, Kenneth I. Chenault, chief executive of American Express, emphasized that entitlement overhaul was necessary to address long-term deficits, along with tax increases and other spending cuts, according to a chief executive in the room.  Stephen A. Schwarzman, chief executive of the Blackstone Group, pointed out that while taxes were lower compared to the economy as a whole than they had been, spending was well above the historical norm. Robert A. McDonald, chief executive of Procter & Gamble, asked about a comprehensive corporate tax overhaul.  Some conservatives are as distrustful of corporate America as they are of big government.  “Large corporations are seekers of welfare as much as anybody,” said Chris Chocola, president of the Club for Growth, an antitax group. “When he has all these guys to the White House, it’s not surprising that they agree with the president. They helped create the current system, and they have a vested interest in a sense in making it worse.”  Jonathan Weisman contributed reporting from Washington, and Nelson D. Schwartz from New York.
President Obama said he refused to engage again in the sort of brinkmanship that brought the country close to default last year and damaged its credit rating.