The job of the president is technically that of the chief executive of the United States. But I’m still fascinated by the extent to which business acumen is being emphasized by the early presidential contenders.
Chris Usher/CBS-TV, via Associated PressNewt Gingrich, small-business man, on “Face the Nation.”
“I think I have proven I can manage money,” Newt Gingrich said Sunday on the CBS News program “Face the Nation.” “As a small-business man I run four small businesses. They have been profitable. They’ve employed people. This is the opposite of the Obama model.”
And here was Donald Trump, back when he was toying with a run: “I’m a much bigger businessman and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” Mr. Trump told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “Mitt Romney is a basically small-business guy, if you really think about it. He was a hedge fund. He was a funds guy. He walked away with some money from a very good company that he didn’t create. He worked there. He didn’t create it.”
Mr. Romney, of course, has emphasized his record as head of the private equity firm Bain Capital: “My experience, my history is in turning things around. I will get America on the right track again.”
I do wonder how smoothly business executive experience translates to being president of the United States. There is a very different set of stakeholders to please and negotiate with. The budget issues are quite different, too, and not only because the federal government can print money and businesses can’t.
To some extent “big business” has been vilified in the last few years, in part because of the financial crisis and in part because there has been so little hiring even as profits soared. So whatever its actual relevance to qualifications for the presidency, it will be interesting to see how effective the “I’m a big-business man” rhetoric is with voters. Presumably this has already been focus-grouped.
Note that the last time this became a major talking was in the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush’s business experience — and his M.B.A., as he became the first president ever to hold such a degree — was cited as evidence of his facility with fiscal constraint.
I’ll let readers come to their conclusions about how accurate that projection was.
Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=55c78d97f378a3f64b6d175744145925