The president isn’t caving to business. He’s co-opting it.

I’ll admit it: I was worried when the president named Bill Daley as his second chief of staff. True, Daley was a loyal Democrat long before he was a bank executive. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the White House was giving in to months of mau-mauing from the business community. That was distressing not just because the idea of Obama as anti-business is wrong, but also because Obama had a lot more leverage over the business community than he seemed to realize.

Not quite three weeks later and I feel confident this is not the case. Despite all the talk about Obama’s political reinvention as we head into the State of the Union, it’s become increasingly clear that Obama isn’t caving to business. He’s shrewdly co-opting it.

Consider the data points. First, right around the time Obama announced Daley, he also appointed Gene Sperling as head of his National Economic Council. Sperling is exactly the person every Democrat should want in this position: Someone with center-left bona fides who may well possess the best combination of wonkish know-how and political smarts in Washington.

From conversations I’ve had with administration officials in recent weeks, it’s clearly Sperling and not Daley who’ll be the key policymaking force in this duo. In fact, Daley was viewed partly as cover for the more liberal Sperling. That’s why, in the run-up to these hirings, I’d repeatedly heard that Sperling’s only path to the NEC post was as part of a package deal that included a high-profile appointment the business community would embrace. “I don’t think there’s any way they just do Gene on his own,” an administration official told me late last year. “His best chance of getting the job is if it’s part of some [pairing]. … I think they recognize they need to send a signal about fresh thinking.”

Daley was that signal. And, judging from the reaction in the business community, the signal was received. U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Tom Donohue called the pick “a strong appointment” and praised Daley as “a man of stature and extraordinary experience.” Republican fundraiser Fred Malik pronounced him the “the first high-level Obama official who has held a real position in business” and cooed that “[h]e understands the business community.” (To be fair, Daley does bring real assets, like a strong managerial hand and genuine political savvy.)