It might have been awkward listening to Wal-Mart’s Lee Scott talk politics in his speech at the NRF’s Big Show Monday. Listening to the guy that many blame for putting little guys out of business may be hard enough, but hearing him tell Democrats and Republicans to get along? Strange.

Photo of Lee Scott courtesy of Wal-Mart.

And although Scott says that Americans are “tired of business versus labor,” I wonder if that’s strictly true right now. With unemployment growing as people get laid off, it just doesn’t seem as relevant.

And it’s hard to hear him sound smug and full of hindsight about public policy:

“To those who say that now is not the time for health care reform, for a new energy policy, for higher quality schools, for comprehensive immigration reform … I say you are wrong. We cannot afford to postpone solving these problems.

Let me ask you … why didn’t we address these problems before? Why didn’t we solve them two years ago when our stock market was above 14,000? Eight years ago when we were a nation at peace in the world? Ten years ago when we had a federal budget surplus … a surplus?”

Since when does the leader of such a huge and fiscally conservative organization care about things such things? Since it started hitting the bottom line. He’s right, we should have been thinking about this stuff a long time ago.

But what can his smaller retail competitors do about it? I was stunned by what he said later:

“As businesses, we have a responsibility to society. We also have an extraordinary opportunity. Let me be clear about this point … there is no conflict between delivering value to shareholders and helping solve bigger societal problems. In fact … they can build on each other when developed, aligned and executed right.”

Huh? He sounds like a liberal! Perhaps he’s only saying this because it no longer counts: he’s leaving his post as CEO, to be replaced by the head of Wal-Mart’s international businesses, Mark Duke.

Read the full transcript of Scott’s speech at Walmartstores.com. The NRF’s blog has an entry listing coverage of Scott’s speech here, and it will be updated with more on Scott’s Q&A with NRF president Tracy Mullin later.

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