Successful businessmen turned Presidents have startling FAIL rate
At every campaign stop, Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, a Harvard MBA graduate, likes to tout his business/executive experience in his 2012 run for POTUS. He's "the business guy" he says. “I spent my life in the private sector.” "I understand how the economy works." And he boldly contrasting himself against President Obama that "in order to be able to create jobs it helps to have had a job."
People with business/executive experience have created jobs, they've managed a workforce and have had to meet a payroll. It's with this background, so the argument goes, that makes successful businessmen uniquely qualified to be POTUS and get an economy in a recession going again.
Given the business background of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, who ended his presidency with the nation's economy and financial system in complete collapse, with the country bogged down in two expensive wars and having squandered a budget surplus that existed when he was first innaugurated, I'm surprised few in the media have bothered to push back or atleast question this notion. This notion has largely gotten a pass and it's high time that the media and the blogosphere call it out for the fallacy that it is.
The few examples I could was by a writer for the Austin Statesmen in a July 6, 2011 article Businessman President Myth discusses the lack of business back of President Calvin Coolidge during the Roaring '20s. Economist Paul Krugman in a recent opinion piece takes on Romney's claim that because he's a successful businessman, the he "knows how the economy works."
But there’s a deeper problem in the whole notion that what this nation needs is a successful businessman as president: America is not, in fact, a corporation. Making good economic policy isn’t at all like maximizing corporate profits. And businessmen — even great businessmen — do not, in general, have any special insights into what it takes to achieve economic recovery.
In addition, Former Governor Tim Pawlenty, appearing on MSNBC's "The Last Word" yesterday [unable to find link to video footage], stumbled and mumbled when asked by Lawrence O'Donnell to name examples of businessmen who were successfull presidents. Gov. Pawlenty was only able to name Ronald Reagan. As we all know, he was an actor, radio broadcaster and union president before getting into politics.
There is little to no evidence whatsoever that suggests having a business background makes one a better presidents. In fact, our most recent examples suggest someone with a business back will actually be a failure as president.
Let's do a quick survey of recent presidents this past century who came to the Oval Office with significant business backgrounds and who's presidencies have largely been judged a failure.
HERBERT HOOVER - The man who was president during the Great Depression Elected president in 1928, the economy crashed during his term, the stock market sank and unemployment rose from 5 percent to 25 percent in the summer of 1932. Yet President Hoover had very extensive business experience but his inability to get us out of the depression made him a one term president. He previously held the position of Secretary of Commerce. He made his fortune in the mining industry and investment banking. He was first appointed as a mine manager working in the mines of Australia. He went on to work for Bewick, Moreing & Co., assigned to work mines in China. He was made a partner in Bewick, Moreing & Co. in 1901 and assumed responsibility for various Australian operations. A brilliant engineer, Hoover came up with a technological innovation. When visiting the mines at Broken Hill, New South Wales, he noticed considerable zinc in the Broken Hill lead-silver ore, which could not be recovered and was lost as tailings. Hoover devised a practical and profitable method to use the then-new froth flotation process to treat these tailings and recover the zinc.[10] He and other partners founded the Zinc Corporation (later, following various mergers, a part of Rio Tinto Group).
JIMMY CARTER - He occupied the White House during a period of "malaise," double digit inflation, and the Iran Hostage Crisis. President Carter began his career as an engineering officer aboard submarines in the U.S. Navy and expected to make a career out it hoping to eventually be promoted to Chief of Naval Operations. But after his father died in 1953, Carter returned to Georgia to run the family business. Over a ten-year period Jimmy Carter proved his managerial skills as he grew his family's agricultural business. In addition to his father's peanut business, he expanded by starting a fertilizer business, adding a cotton gin, and increasing the number of acres he owned and leased. When he ran for Governor of Georgia in 1970 he was considered a successful and wealthy farmer.
GEORGE H.W. BUSH - After winning the first Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he was regarded as a shoo-in for re-election for 1992 until Americans realized he was clueless about how to get the country out of a recession. That cost him re-election. Again, with a very extensive business backgroune, Bush the father started out as a sales clerk in the oil business, with Dresser Industries, a subsidiary of Brown Brothers Harriman. He started the Bush-Overby Oil Development company in 1951 and co-founded the Zapata Petroleum Corporation, an oil company which drilled in the Permian Basin in Texas, two years later. He was named president of the Zapata Offshore Company, a subsidiary which specialized in offshore drilling, in 1954.The subsidiary became independent in 1958, so Bush moved the company from Midland, Texas to Houston. He continued serving as president of the company until 1964, and later chairman until 1966. By the time he entered politics he was a millionaire.
GEORGE W. BUSH - Bush the son has had some impressive business success of his own. Early in his presidency he was known as the "CEO President." Like Mitt Romney, a Harvard MBA graduate, began a series of small, independent oil exploration companies. He created Arbusto Energy and later changed the name to Bush Exploration. In 1984, his company merged with the larger Spectrum 7, and Bush became chairman. The company was hurt by decreased oil prices, and it folded into HKN. He invested $800,000 in the Texas Rangers baseball organization and was the organization's managing general partner for five years. He later sold his shares for $15 million dollars. Not a bad return on your money! I would say that's pretty brilliant.
I don't doubt that there may be aspects and traits of a successful businessman that may be useful as president. But this job also involves runnning a military and a vast intelligence and foreign policy apparatus, making decisions about war and peace, cooperating with co-equal branches of government, often times of the opposite party, that have the power to keep you in check. Government has many moving parts that operate independently of each other. While the sole purpose of a business is to turn a profit, the same can not be said of government. As Lee Ioccocca once remarked: “you can be a success in business and not have the temperament to be president.”