PLANK JULY 17, 2012
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If Mitt Romney’s association with Bain Capital ends up sinking his presidential campaign, he’s unlikely to appreciate the irony. But, if he needs consolation, he might consider seeking solace in American history. The fact is that no successful businessman has ever been a successful president, and only a few have even been serious contenders for the job.
This might seem odd, given Americans’ long romance with wealthy entrepreneurs and the enterprises they build. But a talent for developing private companies and making big profits seldom translates into wooing a majority of voters or governing a contentious republic. It may, in fact, blind one from recognizing critical differences between those equally difficult endeavors.
The most famous example of this disconnect was Herbert Hoover—a multi-millionaire who, like Romney, believed that America needed a shrewd capitalist at the helm of state. By the age of forty, the dour Quaker from rural Iowa had made a sizeable fortune as a metal engineer and developer of mines in several foreign countries. During World War I, Hoover employed his skills for a large, humanitarian purpose, arranging for food to be funneled to the millions of Europeans impoverished by the war. Then, in the 1920s, he became a high-profile Commerce Secretary, bringing industries together in trade associations where they could regulate themselves. Thus, Hoover had gained fame as an unelected public servant as well as one of the richest businessmen of his day—in contrast with William Randolph Hearst and Henry Ford, self-serving contemporaries who had earlier flirted with presidential runs.
When he ascended to the White House in 1929, many commentators expected that Hoover’s organizational acumen would make him a brilliant, practical leader. “We were in a mood for magic,” recalled one journalist about the start of his presidential term, “We summoned a great engineer to solve our problems for us; now we sat back comfortably and confidently to watch the problems being solved.”
But the onset of the Great Depression later that fall required the skills of a master politician, and Hoover, who had never run for office before, proved to be a less-than-mediocre one. A stiff and awkward speaker, he neither showed empathy for the jobless nor rallied Congress behind a credible plan to reverse the nation’s economic slide. Hoover’s stern belief in “rugged individualism” had helped win him riches and renown. But it prevented him from recognizing that Americans in trouble needed material relief instead of sermons about the evils of the dole and an unbalanced budget. “The Great Humanitarian who had fed the starving Belgians in 1914, the Great Engineer so hopefully elevated to the presidency in 1928, now appeared as the Great Scrooge,” writes one historian. After a career spent commanding his own organizations, Hoover was unable to adjust to a job that required persuasion, adaptation, and compromise.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Hoover despised, became the exemplar of a chief executive: compassionate, witty, capable of switching from damning his opponents to winning enough of them over whenever necessary. And so, over the next six decades, the idea of a businessman as president largely went out of fashion. Part of this has to do with the fact that Americans wanted professional politicians to administer the new government programs—domestic and military—on which a majority of the public had come to depend.
(The only exception to the trend was the GOP nomination of Wendell Willkie in 1940. But it’s significant that Willkie, a utility executive, promised to preserve the most important New Deal programs. And, in any case, his erratic speaking style and lack of experience in government convinced most swing voters to stick with FDR.)
But in 1992, many Americans seemed ready again for a self-made mogul who would run America like a business. Growing unemployment and a massive deficit—coupled with a massive riot in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict—fueled a sense that the nation was in decline. Ross Perot addressed this fear with brash promises to balance the budget and curb free trade, enlivened with sharp yet homespun metaphors. For a few weeks, he was actually leading the nominees of both major parties in the polls. Yet, like Hoover, Perot was incapable of adjusting to a protean political environment.
The billionaire Texan exerted iron control over his grass-roots operation, firing any paid activists who displeased him. He courted trouble by ad-libbing many speeches, such as one to the NAACP (where he lectured “you people”). And Perot invited the media’s ridicule with groundless stories about a Black Panther hit squad and a Republican plot to disrupt his daughter’s wedding. Outrage and sarcasm were his sole responses to criticism. “If he thinks he is right,” acknowledged Perot’s son, Ross Jr., "that is all that matters."
The same could be said about Herman Cain, who, one recalls, was briefly the front-runner for the GOP nomination. Judged at the time the “most likeable” of the contenders, Cain, the former capo of Godfather Pizza, shared the same flaw Perot displayed two decades earlier: a self-righteous, if wisecracking, conviction in his own nostrum (the 9-9-9 tax plan) for fixing a sick economy. Neither man understood that a clever, motivational style is not enough to lift one into the White House.
Mitt Romney is certainly more adept at running for the presidency than were any of his corporate predecessors. And his penchant for changing his mind, or at least his positions, has gotten him in more trouble than has any adherence to personal dogma. Yet Romney’s dogged refusal to release any of his income tax returns before 2010 reveals a similar inability to comprehend the suspicions many Americans harbor about the acquisition of exceptional wealth. As Michael Tomasky wrote last week in The Daily Beast, “Releasing your returns is just one of those things you have to do, like eating corn dogs in Iowa. That he is even fighting this point shows us, or at least gives us much reason to suspect, that the kind of capitalism he practiced for 25 years is utterly incompatible with civic responsibility.”
More important, Romney fervently shares the same mistaken credo preached by Hoover, Perot, and Cain. They all believed that to do well in business, which requires dedication to the narrow welfare of one firm or economic sector, splendidly equips one to triumph in the presidency, which demands a talent for reconciling competing interests and voter blocs for the purpose of advancing a semblance of the common, national good. To get rich may be glorious. But it does not qualify you to represent the best ideals of the country or to make policy for the vast majority of Americans. After all, the only chance most of us will have to get $100,000 a year in exchange for no work is to win the lottery.
Michael Kazin’s latest book, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation, will be out in paperback next month. He teaches history at Georgetown University and is co-editor of Dissent.
12 comments
Kazin is right. A corporate economy and a national economy are two different animals. You can't ram things through in government like you can in business. And Hoover wasn't even a good businessman. He made a conscious decision to let the banks fail. That's something Ayn Rand and other Rightists ignorant of macro-economics would do. I'm glad Bernanke isn't one of those, or most of us would be in soup lines now. And, of course, most successful business people don't know how to deal with recalcitrant employees. In business you simply fire them. In government you can pay a heavy, even a fatal, price for doing that. Successful business people think they know it all. They don't.
- magboy47.
July 17, 2012 at 7:06pm
Kazin says it well: "Romney fervently shares the same mistaken credo preached by Hoover, Perot, and Cain. They all believed that to do well in business, which requires dedication to the narrow welfare of one firm or economic sector, splendidly equips one to triumph in the presidency, which demands a talent for reconciling competing interests and voter blocs for the purpose of advancing a semblance of the common, national good. To get rich may be glorious. But it does not qualify you to represent the best ideals of the country or to make policy for the vast majority of Americans." BHO is no businessman-- but he really hasn't proved to be a good politician either. I suspect most that are not die-hard acolytes believe that he really does now own the economy and has shown he would deal with it in the next 4 years as he has in the last 4 years.. Not a happy prospect.. The Neville Chamberlain or James Buchanan of our times. Better than his tormentors-- but much less than what is needed. The good news for Dems is if Romney is elected Prez (almost certainly because GNP declined and unemployment rose by November), he is anti-charismatic and not trustworthy --- and unlikely to obtain a personal following even among Repubs. Emminently defeatable in 2016. The other good news for Dems is that a BHO defeat in 2012 will almost-certainly lead to the rise of new Progressive Dem leaders. Without Progressives regaining power-- and utilizing it effectively-- the US is in serious trouble from right-wing dominance.
- drofnats1
July 17, 2012 at 7:11pm
You think progressives are going to rise from the ashes? With what money, what power? Seriously you gotta be kidding me. If Romney gets in we'll be too busy just trying to survive to worry about being progressive. In fact that's where most people are already in fact, thanks to the genius idea of starting two wars and cutting taxes at the same time. At its extreme, that kind of situation brings out the worst in people, not the best. Look at the kids from poor neighborhoods who are playing pick 'em out and knock 'em out then recording the attacks on You Tube and Facebook. That's the result of poverty, lack of education, oppression and despair. Progressives they are not - nor are large swathes of under-educated, underemployed Red State folks - they are angry right wingers, not left. Alternatively, if Romney gets in, the wealthy corporations will all of a sudden start spending some of their cash, throwing folks just enough bones jobwise to ensure they stay in power indefinitely. Did that occur to you? Or maybe they start a major war, employ people in armaments plants - as "contractors," so forth - who's going to bite the hand that feeds? If you care about progressive causes don't try to outfox these guys by voting for Romney. Sheese. Talk about the briar patch. There's a word for governments that enshrine corporations and worship corporate power. How did that work out for White Rose and the communists? I don't want to go anywhere near that.
- Sophia
July 17, 2012 at 8:02pm
Anyway, Obama is becoming a better politician, and, businessmen make bad presidents in democratic systems because they're used to being Da Boss, their word is law, they can fire you if you look funny to them, fail to pay equally if you're a woman, the wrong color, if they just don't like you. Supposedly, in America, the president works for US. Heaven forbid we forget that!
- Sophia
July 17, 2012 at 8:05pm
When will people understand that the public sector and the private sector are two very different things? We need government that's business-like but not run like a business.
- Claris
July 18, 2012 at 6:53am
I'm not so sure Romney fits the profile of a "businessman". His business was to advise real businessmen how to improve the businesses they had built; and then to convince the heirs of real businessmen to give Romney their inheritances so Romney could generate better returns than the heirs could generate on their own. While Romney has been cast as a green eyeshades type, poring over flow charts and financial statements, the reality is that he spent most of his career selling, first consulting services to real businessmen and then investment services to the heirs of the businessmen. That's very different from what a captain of industry does, building a successful business from the ground up. Or to make the analogy to another wealthy politician, Romney came into the game late as a pinch runner on third base and thinks he hit a triple.
- rayward
July 18, 2012 at 7:09am
Sophia. If there is a not-unikely Dunkirk for Dems in November, be prepared to fight-- not run around in circles. You border on someone evoking Godwin's law--- Repubs aren't yet totalitarian Nazi's. And Mittens ain't Adolph (a major point of my post). As for Progressives taking over, your belief (and support) is that Blue Dog Dems will be in the ascendant? Care to bet, if Mittens is Prez?? I strongly suspect it IS the only way to get Dems to reverse their rightward drift to counteract a further-rightward drift of the Repubs. And as for re-electing BHO, what is it going to accomplish for Progressives other than a slower drift to the right 2012-2014 or -2016?? Post after post is how bad the Repubs are.. NOT anything Progressive that BHO will accomplish. I agree with you, HE WON'T. You really think that BHO's past behavior is not the best predictor of his future behavior? If I had a $ for every time someone at tnr said BHO has recognized he must change his mixed-message or non-Progessive approach and consistently do X-Progressive, I'd be REALLY wealthy. Sometimes in strategic games (like politics), the best strategy is to fold and get a new draw. Dems too often constantly play roulette while Repubs play chess. Do you really regret that Al Smith lost in 1928?
- drofnats1
July 18, 2012 at 8:35am
Sophia, If Romney becomes president, I'm not sure corporate America will be throwing people any job-bones at all, just to help Romney. They have 2.2 trillion dollars in the bank. They got that by thinking only of their CEO's and their stockholders. They have become so anally retentive about their record profits that I can't see them giving people who want living wages jobs. They have become too habituated to obsessing about profits. We'll see. Anything's possible--but not probable.
- magboy47.
July 18, 2012 at 9:54am
Droftnats, I really don't like to argue with you because you seem to dwell in a Leninst alternative dimension where everything gets better for Progressives when it all gets worse for everyone. But to answer your last question about Al Smith in 1928, let's just assume that Al Smith would have responded to the onset of the Great Depression in 1929-30 with the same acuity that FDR responded to it during the deepest part of the crisis in 1933-34 -- in particular, by effectively getting the US off the Gold Standard and taking aggressive action to limit losses from failing banks. That would not have prevented the Depression overall, but it would have saved a great deal of Americans from utter financial ruin and helped them and their families weather a global economic downturn than what the Hoover Administration did from 1929 until the end of 1931, which is sit on its hands and issue exhortations to the public about how the economy would recover any day now. Your use of mid-20th century history to bolster your asinine opinions about current events is your own choice, but please make sure that you know what the eff you're talking about before you throw out names and counter-factuals. Or, better yet, just skip the allusions to the Depression, World War II and whatnot and just argue about the present rather than try to make soup of the past.
- wildboy
July 18, 2012 at 12:11pm
Wildboy. I gather you find a Progressive future impossible and not to be desired as it makes matters worse?? A true DINO. The crash would almost certainly have ruined Al Smith and the Dems.. his policies were much nearer Hoover's than FDR's. For you, Churchill and Chamberlain are interchangeable. I disagree. And what IS BHO going to accomplish if re-elected??
- drofnats1
July 18, 2012 at 3:03pm
3rd Prize: Elected Vice-President. 2nd Prize: Elected President. 1st Prize: Lose Presidency (1st time or 2nd time)
- skahn
July 18, 2012 at 4:26pm
Wildboy, my aren't you wild? Well, it's a change.
- skahn
July 18, 2012 at 4:29pm