Terry McGraw, the chairman and chief executive officer of the McGraw-Hill Companies, said he had been 'very pleasantly surprised' by President Barack Obama's recent efforts to promote the interests of U.S. business. But Obama could do better, he added, if he had a high-powered adviser with more of a business bent in the White House. 'You've got to strengthen the team,' McGraw said in an interview Tuesday. 'You've got to get some gravitas.' Nearly halfway through Obama's term, the dearth of business and Wall Street types in his administration rankles many executives, if only as a proxy for their unhappiness with his policies and occasional antibusiness political speech. And the White House has struggled to find such a person to fill the one spot about to open in Obama's inner circle, the director of the National Economic Council, the job being vacated this month by Lawrence H. Summers. The president's uneasy and somewhat distant relationship with the worlds of business and finance will hang over his meeting Wednesday with the chiefs of about 20 corporations, among them Google, American Express, UPS and Intel. While Obama has held such roundtables in the past, this one is part of a fresh effort by the administration to build closer ties over the next two years, officials say. Relations have improved since the big Republican gains in the midterm elections: Obama has concluded a free-trade agreement with South Korea, negotiated a tax-cut package with congressional Republicans and delayed anti-pollution emissions regulations, all steps applauded by business constituencies. But the president has had trouble enlisting a prominent insider with business experience to fill the vacancy that will open when Summers returns to his Harvard professorship in January. Presidents of both parties, but especially Republicans, typically have had high-profile executives in their cabinets, although the executives' records in the world of politics are mixed. President George W. Bush, for example, had a string of chief executives as Treasury secretary -- Paul O'Neill of Alcoa, John Snow of CSX and Henry M. Paulson Jr. of Goldman Sachs -- although only Paulson was seen as exercising much influence. President Bill Clinton most prominently had Robert E. Rubin, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs, as Treasury secretary and director of the National Economic Council. Clinton also had two White House chiefs of staff who came from the business world, Thomas F. McLarty III and Erskine B. Bowles. Obama, taking office amid a financial crisis and the worst recession since the Depression, recruited advisers experienced in economics and governmental crisis management. That included Summers, a former Treasury secretary, and Timothy F. Geithner, who had been president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as Treasury secretary. To be in charge of relations with business, Obama picked one of his closest advisers from Chicago, Valerie Jarrett, a former chief executive of the Habitat Company, a real estate development company. But some in the business community do not regard her as an effective advocate; she is so close to the president, some say, that she is more apt to tell them what he thinks than the other way around. 'In the Clinton White House, people in the business community turned to someone like Bob Rubin when there was discussion internally,' said one Democratic lobbyist, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid criticizing a president of his own party. 'It's not an anti-Valerie thing; I just don't think they believe that there is anybody inside with that stature and that view.' In an interview, Jarrett said the discord between the administration and business leaders was an inevitable outgrowth of the crisis the president inherited and of the uncertainty businesses felt in the debates over health care and financial regulations. Now, she said, the two sides can turn the page. Conflict with the health and financial industries is sure to persist, however, as the administration writes the regulations to put the new laws into effect. In recent weeks, Jarrett has been organizing a series of meetings between Obama and corporate executives. That includes the Blair House gathering, which is closed to the media. 'We have assured the group that is coming that the intent is to have a working session with the president,' Jarrett said. 'This is not a photo-op.' As for replacing Summers, Jarrett said that Obama believes what is more important than hiring a business leader is having 'a person who is going to give the president the best possible advice on how to grow the economy.' Even so, she said she had done 'an enormous amount of outreach' seeking suggested candidates. The problem for the administration head-hunters comes down to the job description. The director of the National Economic Council is one of four principals on the economic team and is the only one to work near the Oval Office. But the job requires being an honest broker for other advisers' views, knowing how government works and showing deference to Congress. Most executives have little such experience, or interest. No widely known executives are among those Obama is known to have spoken with or is considering. Candidates include Roger Altman, a Wall Street investment banker who was a deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration; Richard Levin, an economist and the longtime president of Yale University; and Gene Sperling, a counselor to Geithner who was director of the National Economic Council in Clinton's second term. Bowles, a former businessman who led Clinton's Small Business Administration and then was his chief of staff, has said he is not interested. Some administration advisers have talked of creating a job for an executive as a counselor to Obama. David Cote, the chief executive of Honeywell, who also serves on Obama's economic recovery board and was on his bipartisan debt-reduction commission, said he is not 'hung up' on Obama hiring business executives. 'I don't think somebody has to have actually been there to have the right mindset or attitude,' Cote said. 'My concern up to most recently has just been that kind of attitude or approach that felt too much like we were the bad guys.' He said he told Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, early on that Obama should tone down his anti-business remarks. But he says the tough talk did not disappear as quickly as he would have liked. 