Frankly, I don't think it has anything to do with how his policies have affected or will affect business, although that is what has been and will be claimed. A rationalization. I believe it is because he has raised the issue of executive pay and appointed a "Pay Tzar" to question it. Which is the equivalent of a governor appointing a "Pension Tzar," and drawing an open comparison between the deals public employee unions have grabbed in the past 15 years and the situation of everyone else. So should Obama back off?
Hell no! The horse is out of the barn, and Obama might as well give up on executive support, other than support from honest executives on the subject. He might as well REALLY raise the issue, and keep doing it. He has everything to gain, and nothing to lose. FDR knew this, and acted accordingly.
And just as the correct way to attack excess years in retirement is from the left, as a social injustice against the less well off resulting in diminished public services and higher taxes, so the correct way to attack excess executive pay is from the right, as a ripoff of shareholders (including public employee pensions). Ask John Bogle.
Not by proposing government regulation of the high end labor market, but by suggesting shareholders rally together to do it themselves, because that market is a rigged market and not a real free market. How about an anti-trust investigation of executive pay consultants, with subpeona power?
You probably couldn't convict them, but you probably could embarass them. "So, how have investor returns gone in all the years the pay of those at the top has soared? You mean there aren't any other MBAs out there who could do the job for less? In retrospect, couldn't we have paid less while going ten years with zero return or less? On what basis were those executives worth 300 times those they supervised?"
I'll bet what you'd find is similar to what has been found in Bell, California.
Those with an excess sense of entitlement cannot be satisfied, and need to be dragged to confront the consequences for others of the deals they have cut for themselves, kicking and screaming and whining and threatening all the way. They want to feel loved? Well, people love Steve Jobs, who earns little in salary and only makes money when the company does. No one else in politics is going to do it — they are all being funded by someone who benefits from something. Having crossed the Rubicon, President Obama might was well.