AZspot AZspot

blue bits. red rocks.
Thursday 19 July 2012
Why Businessmen Don’t Get Elected President

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.”

65 notes

  1. felixity reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  2. nakednorth69 reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  3. theworldaccordingtoevie reblogged this from stayinvolvednow
  4. stayinvolvednow reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias and added:
    Very cool article, the correlation between Hoover and Romney is very interesting, will Romney be the the big Scrooge in...
  5. going-to-scranton reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  6. trotskitty reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  7. bearsnakepig reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  8. serpentking456 reblogged this from truth-has-a-liberal-bias
  9. truth-has-a-liberal-bias reblogged this from other-stuff
  10. introvertedart reblogged this from silas216
  11. randomactsofchaos reblogged this from azspot
  12. silas216 reblogged this from azspot
  13. ronmarks reblogged this from hairtrending
  14. hairtrending reblogged this from azspot

A GNT creation ©2007–2013