Do Businessmen Make Good Presidents? Public Radio sidesteps Bush/Cheney answer

[yurbud]

When I heard the host ask the question and continue with,

But does business experience give a head of state a leg up? And why does a nation turn to a CEO for leadership?

http://www.theworld.org/2012/02/do-businessmen-make-good-presidents/

I assumed they were going to go for the obvious recent example in American history: George W. Bush and his Halliburton CEO VP, Dick Cheney.

Instead, the story went on to talk about Vicente Fox, a president of Thailand, Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, and even non-president, Donald Trump.

As odd as the absence of Bush and Cheney was the absence of a very obvious question: do businessmen in office use their skills for the public good, or do they simply use the office to help their business and cronies who will reciprocate later? I'm sure their are lots of the first kind, but far more often, businessmen see public office as a way to pursue business by other means, just as their campaign donations are far from altruistic, and a pretty strong relationship exists between an industry's donations and getting a favorable outcome on legislation that effects them.

Another odd twist on this story was how they described Romney's business experience, as doing ''business turnaround as a management consultant.''

Isn't that a bit like calling a cannibal as doing health turnaround as a weight loss consultant?

NPR and Public Radio International do the public a disservice when they practice historical revision like this, and making conservative epic catastrophe that which shall not be mentioned.

[yurbud]

1. .

[librechik]

2. new GOP rule: Never speak ill of another Republican, and never speak the words Bush or Cheney

and NPR is as partisan and RW as Fox News, except more secretively

[HughBeaumont]

3. Wonder if this carries over to the wealthy . . .

. . . particularly the reason why the wealthy and their corporations so steadfastly lobby against universal health care even though health care benefits are an obvious cost issue.

Maybe the "don't step on each other's toes" rule applies here too?

Or another possible reason is that if universal health care WAS enacted, it would mean the end of an "employer's market" (i.e., workers wouldn't stay in shit jobs at shit wages, individuals would be able to start businesses easier, etc)?

[yurbud]

7. employer's market AND interlocking boards of directors and investments

If there's a lot of money to be made in insurance, someone's not going to abstain from investing in it just because their ancestor started a tire or shirt factory.

They've all got a taste of each other's broth.

[yurbud]

4. Terry Gross did an episode on Citizens United and covered all the right bases until...

she had somebody from the right on, and when she asked why people shouldn't think that Newt's big donor won't expect something in return for his backing, and the righty got all indignant in response, huffing that maybe they just agree with Newt's ideas and there was no evidence that Newt modified his ideas or would give anything in return for it, she didn't follow up.

She didn't present evidence showing the correlation between industry donations and getting the legislative outcome they want, or pols going to work after they leave office for industries they served while in office. She didn't even laugh at him.

Instead she just sputtered like he had made an unassailable retort, or that it would be bad manners to call bullshit on him.
[font color=red]
I went back and reread the transcript, and her end doesn't read as backtracking as it sounded, but the guy walks over her points a lot. Read it here.[/font]

[gratuitous]

5. George W. Bush, the first MBA President

Oddly enough, I don't think Harvard is doing a lot of bragging on that, and they're usually quite vocal about their distinguished alumni.

[yurbud]

6. He is the poster boy for legacy affirmative action and why it's worse than the regular kind