Romney Says Business Success Indicates He Can Handle the US Economy…Is That True?

With John McCain and Mitt Romney in a statistical tie there, Floridians are voting in their state’s presidential primary.

Concerns about the national economy have increased in recent weeks. In the face of these concerns, Romney has been touting his supposed superior capacity to deal with economic issues because of his business background.

So far as I can recall, only three US presidents have spent major portions of their adult lives in business: Herbert Hoover and the two Bushes.

Hoover was an authentic business success. After graduating from Stanford University, Hoover, as a young man, was a mining engineer, who made millions for his company. He had an extraordinary ability to pick the right places to mine. Eventually, he negotiated a deal with his company, getting a piece of the profit on all the successful projects he initiated and becoming a millionaire before he was thirty. Hoover then became an independent contractor and made millions more.

After that, as most people know, the native Iowan headed a major relief effort, providing food and other help to Europeans in the post-World War I-era.

Hoover was seen as a can-do guy who knew how modern economies worked.

It was maybe inevitable then that Hoover should become involved in government work. Warren Harding appointed him to be Secretary of Commerce, a post he continued to hold throughout the tenure of Harding’s successor, Calvin Coolidge.

During his years at Commerce, Hoover was ubiquitous, involving himself in a broad range of domestic and foreign policy matters. He was called “Secretary of Everything.”

In 1928, there was simply no question that Hoover would be the Republican nominee for president. He won in a landslide over New York Governor Al Smith. Inaugurated in March, 1929, Hoover was president a scant seven months when the stock market crash hit.

In the face of the ensuing depression, the well-meaning Miracle Man seemed incapable of perceiving, let alone responding to, the crisis. At first, he denied that a major problem existed. Then, as he slowly realized the magnitude of the nation’s woes, he offered ineffectual measures. He was trounced as he sought re-election in 1932. For all his undeniable acumen as a businessperson, a catalyst for major coordinated efforts, and a management genius, acknowledged as such by both President Truman and Eisenhower, two of his successors, Hoover was utterly incompetent in dealing with economic matters.

The Bushes were the inheritors of great wealth, acquired by George H.W. Bush’s grandfather. They were two examples of the family tradition, which says that its male members will go into politics, but only after securing independent wealth undergirded by the family’s notable capacity for initial capitalization, in business. George H.W. Bush was, by most accounts, quite successful in his ventures into the Texas oil industry of the 1950s. The younger George appears to have been far less so, helped to success in spite of red-inking business practices in both oil and in major league baseball.

Of course, the elder Bush lost the presidency to Bill Clinton, whose campaign mantra was, “It’s the economy, stupid.” George H.W. Bush seemed detached from the economic difficulties then afflicting the country.

The younger Bush takes credit for forestalling recession through the enactment of tax cuts early in his term and is even now grappling with the current downturn in the economy.

Is business success (or failure) an indicator of a potential president’s ability to deal with the economy? The number of presidents who actually spent much of their adult lives in business is small. So, it’s difficult to know the answer to that question. But, based on the small sampling, the answer would appear to be no.

[This is being cross-posted at my personal site, Better Living: Thoughts from Mark Daniels.]