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As the US presidential campaign inches closer to Election Day, a few more people are paying attention, and listening to the alleged issues. Among the campaign's sillier questions is whether the ideal president ought to have a “business” background.
On this point, Mitt Romney is always cited as potentially the first businessman-president since Herbert Hoover. This contention overlooks our two recent oil-business presidents, and it snubs Harry S Truman, who took stabs at several businesses. Truman's most famous enterprise was a Kansas City haberdashery — although it went belly-up in two years. Truman's clothing store was just as much a “business” as Hoover's mining empire and Romney's career as a private-equity barracuda.
In the end, Truman the lousy businessman, proved an admirable president. On the other hand, while George W. Bush's bumbling career in the Texas oilfields matched Truman's mercantile misadventures in Missouri, all we got from that was a president lousier than he was an oilman.
There is no trend here.
Since Hoover, five eventual presidents were lawyers turned politicians, starting with FDR, including a string of three in a row — JFK, LBJ, Tricky Dick — and ending with Bill Clinton. Also: two oilmen, a general, a peanut farmer, Harry the haberdasher, a community organizer, and an actor who never got the girl at the end of the movie.
Still with no trend evident, the answer to the silly question is: Don't rely on a resumé to handicap the presidency. Nor does a CV indicate how a guy will perform in office. Who, after all, would have expected our most pacifist president, Woodrow Wilson, to lead the nation into World War I? Or Richard Nixon, the pinko-baiting blacklister of the 1940s, to usher Red China back into respectability?
We get a true measure of our leaders only in retrospect. Looking back, we see that neither Truman nor Lyndon Johnson were as bad as we thought on their last day in office. On the other hand, the accomplishments of John F. Kennedy (because of his aborted potential) and Ronald Reagan (whose lingering legacy is trickle-down economics) seem destined to keep diminishing over time.
Reagan, however, had a significance that transcends laws, treaties and policies. He was the rare transformational president who — largely by force of his personality — virtually reversed the magnetic field of American politics.
One of my pet theories is that the national political conversation flows, for decades, in one direction or the other. For example, after Reconstruction, the national discourse remained reliably conservative for about 50 years. Despite populist uprisings, a Socialist movement among laborers, and Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt who tried to rein in the power of Big Money, most Americans recognized a status quo in which a small, moneyed aristocracy called the shots in society and politics. This ruling class held sway tenaciously until finally discrediting itself, spectacularly, in the Crash of '29.
However, the oligarchy's collapse didn't guarantee the liberal epoch that followed. In places like Germany and Italy, a disgraced conservative elite gave way to an even more conservative elite who used populism as pretext for tyranny. America's next leader was also populist, but genuinely so. Franklin D. Roosevelt undertook a program of redistributing political power downward and outward, while carrying on a conversation — really a monologue — with the American people that sold his radical program. FDR's charm didn't turn the United States into a broadly liberal nation overnight. But the New Deal, the Allied victory in World War II, and post-war programs like the Marshall Plan and the GI Bill reinforced a consensus among Americans that they could trust government to hear their voices and to do the right thing, most of the time.
This liberal tide didn't begin to ebb until the post-Vietnam War crises that marked the 1970s. Even then, the flow might not have turned conservative without the guidance, charisma, and rhetorical gifts of Reagan, FDR's alter ego.
Reagan steered America's conversation sharply to the right, and it has remained conservative ever since, almost drowning Bill Clinton in the process. Barack Obama's sudden rise in 2008 suggested to many observers that a progressive reversal might be imminent. Obama certainly fulfilled one prerequisite. His eloquence and likeability are in the same class with FDR and the Gipper.
Nevertheless, as the last four years demonstrate, a 180-degree shift in the political voice of 300 million Americans is no small feat. These magnetic-field reversals erupt generations apart and take more than a decade to truly manifest. It's conceivable that the 2012 election — if Obama wins — might be seen, years from now, as the tipping point of such a change.
Years from now, we'll know for sure.
Interesting perspective on reputation vs. reality. I have mixed feelings on a businessman as president. I'm not sure it makes any difference as you point out. I'd rather judge a candidate on his/her record. The only problem here is the accusations of flip-flopping…candidates actually change thir minds?! Does anyone hold the same opinions on everything that they did 10, 20 or 30 years ago? I don't, and I'd like to think I have learned through experience.
If only a country is a business. It is not. A nation goes to war, defends borders and runs the risk of huge deficits in order to protect its citizens. A nation also cannot just operate on the basis of profit and loss. So, the idea that you should get someone with business experience to run the nation is idiotic. What a nation needs is someone with the capability to attract and appoint people with the right expertise to all positions where they can do their best.
If we need a businessman during periods of economic crisis, I guess we would need a general in time of war and a physician during times of medical emergencies or virus outbreak. In other words, we need Captain America.
Both resumes and candidates are quite great. But challenge to them is quite huge. We wish the winner do the best and help the great democracy.
@Bolaji, Yes, it's not just about the economy, as a slogan of a few elections back had it. There are many other serious issues that come with the presidency.
The president has more access to talented people to get advice from than anyone else. The president also has more work and more people this deligate this work to than anyone else. To a large extent a strong business or legal background is less important than the ability to find the right people to work with the president.
wskehr, I absolutely agree. What the best leaders have is the ability to build great teams by carefully selecting technocrats who are fantastic in managing each sector of government. We expect the president to perform miracles while in office — and they make these kind of promises while running for office — but without a good supportive team they will fail.
I think the same applies in government. A CEO is just expected to understand his business and that's good but it is better if he is able to pick great lieutenants, lead and motivate them.
You are right on that,Wskehr, but then the responsibility still lies with the president to be able to select the right people anomg some many available people.
This inside look at a thriving European business is food for thought when it comes to just what competive advantages the West possesses. Peacetime Europe certainly has held on to deep-rooted traditions that impact their way of life. Both Europe and the United States have striven to be less insular. At a time when the availability of raw materials poses significant challenges to growth, globalization uncovers opportunities for synergy in global cooperation, but also pitfalls as highly complex trading relationships can misdirect capital to the point of causing certain areas to be starved of resources.
Nothing motivates like necessity however, and here it looks like the Swiss have risen to the challenge. Watchmaking and other precision mechanics have been their proverbial strong suit, and a traditionally conservative financial sector has undoubtedly contributed to their success here.
I think you make a great point here: while it migh not be easy, companies that stand their ground can succeed with this business model. High-mix, low-volume manufacturing hasn't experienced the exodus the high-volume, low mix companies have. But with the industry being cyclical, the low-volume companies have had to withstand some lean times. It's good to hear that Escatec has been able to maintian its profit margins and value. Finally, a customer base that understands the “cost of ownership” equation! Well done
Yeah, I think candidate with track-able records who would not renege on promises to citizens should get the mandate.
@Bolaji, intrigued by your description, I visited the Escatec website. I went to its page on jobs and careers and found it also offers apprenticeships. Unfortunatley, though, that particular page fills in all the descriptions in German, which I don't read. The regular job page includes a number of engineer positions. There is about an even distribution shown for jobs in Switzerland and Malysia, though some of the jobs, here, too, are written in German.
I too visited the website o Escatec. Its impressive. 37 years of profitable growth, amazing. I guess they are keep themselves well focussed. When it comes to Swiss companies, sophistication, style and quality comes in mind. Yes its difficult to find good tool and die mechanical engineers as difficult it is to find good analog engineers.
Ariella, Correct. That's certainly one area the company can improve upon. They listed the jobs in German because the catchment area for the applicants is german speaking. Even though the jobs are listed in German, though, I believe most of the engineers who work for the company are literate in English. You are right, however, the company needs to offer its jobs information also in English.
Ariella, A quick follow up. I believe the email address of the top executives at the company should be on the site or another way to contact them. The executives and engineers I met with speak English and one way to contact them would be to email them.
@Bolaji good to know that they are reachable and can communicate in English. I don't think I'll bother them just to satisfy my idle curiosity though.
Ariella, Idle curiousity? You don't want to live by the shores of Lake Constance? Let me tempt you. 🙂
@Bolaji, oh you've tempted me all right! I'm a sucker for water views. Of course, I live on Long Island just a bike ride away from the ocean, but there are no snow-capped alps in the background. Still, it would be rather a long commute for my husband to get to hig job in NYC from there.
I tried. Sigh!
Oh, I forgot. There's a second option that you can consider. How about a vacation with your husband if you haven't been there already? The Swiss franc is kind of strong right now vs the dollar but if the sights are tempting enough . . .
Here's one from my one of my favorite cities;
@Bolaji, Now that sounds like a really nice idea.