• Wall Street Journal, Thursday, July 16, 2009 10:49 AM

In four short years, Wal-Mart has gone "from whipping boy of the political left to corporate leviathan now welcomed with open arms by a Democratic White House" writes Ann Zimmerman, who traces the metamorphosis to a reputation survey that found that the company had, in turn, gone from "corporate darling to demon." The retainer's board told then-CEO Lee Scott to turn things around.

His early efforts were "ham-handed," Zimmerman writes, but then Scott hired Leslie Dach, an Edelman executive with ties to the Dems, to head corporate communications. He also stopped defending Wal-Mart's policies and started to change them.

The latest result is a program, announced yesterday, to require manufacturers to figure out the full environmental costs of making their products, Miguel Bustillo reports.

The information will be used to create ratings that will be put on labels for shoppers to compare. Products will be judged by their impact over their entire life -- and company buyers will be expected to improve the ratings of the products they acquire over time.

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