Mitt Romney claims his business background qualifies him for the presidency. Well, I don’t know. “Business background” is a broad descriptive brush. I’m in the poetry business, for example. Does that qualify me for the Oval Office? Many people (perhaps most) would say it doesn’t.
Romney’s own “business background,” his claimed primary qualifier for this country’s top elected post, is therefore something I thought deserved closer scrutiny. Looking back at previous presidents’ own activities in the world of business, and how these activities were paraded in their campaigns for the White House, offers some guidance here.
FDR, for example, was basically a trustafarian from a rich family who went into politics as a matter of public service. He did do a stint as an attorney before becoming governor of New York on his way to the Oval Office, but this legal business experience was ever highlighted in his campaigns for president.
His successor, Harry Truman, did run a business. He peddled soft goods before a notorious big city political boss got him elected to the Senate. Hustling spats and bonnets, however, were not a qualification Truman focused upon in his bid for reelection in 1948.
Dwight Eisenhower, of course, made his name as a general and this was his primary qualification for the presidency. Richard Nixon’s was a lawyer and thus had legal business experience, but never claimed it as a major presidential credential (not all that surprising since there are more than a million lawyers in this country and it’s hard to avoid them even when its not an election season).
Jimmy Carter owned and operated a peanut farm. But again, didn’t put his goober peas-rearing skills atop his political resume.
Though he gained wealth and greater public exposure as a corporate pitchman, Ronald Reagan never told voters they should cast their ballot for him because he knew how to help sell toasters. Nor did Bill Clinton assert that his own best qualification to be president was his place atop a large law firm in a small state.
The two president Bushes were indeed well-known for their business experiences — the former as an oil man, the latter as co-owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team. Well known, yes, but neither said “vote for me because I made a pile drilling for oil” or “because I helped run a baseball franchise.” These were simply noted as things they did on the way to doing more important work in government, rather than an alternative to past government experience.
Which brings us back to Mitt Romney’s own business claim qualification to the presidency — business experience closely linked to work with Wall Streeters. Looking back over who this claim and this experience most resembles, the most obvious similarities are with President Herbert Hoover. Indeed, Romney and Hoover not only share Wall Street business background similarities, they share some noteworthy personality traits as well.
Hoover was an engineer, but he made his fortune working in tandem with big money from The Street. His terms as Secretary of Commerce in the Coolidge Administration solidified these contacts still further. In personal terms, Hoover was an avid supporter of efficiency at all costs, believing it made for both a better marketplace and a better government.
It was these same professional contacts and personal traits that explain what made his tenure in the presidency so disastrous. He had faith that his friends on Wall Street would straighten things out quickly and naturally if not forced to change their ways. He also believed that the budding years of the Great Depression over which he presided were just another dip (albeit a big dip) in an economic cycle that was inherently self-correcting.
All this having been noted, it’s also important to point out that Herbert Hoover was one of the greatest humanitarians in history. He not only organized a massive and successful relief effort in a devastated post-World War I Western Europe, he did the same for millions of Russians, managing, somehow to work with a suspicious and hostile Communist regime that was erecting obstacles every step of the way.
So then, we come back to Mitt Romney and his own business background as a White House qualifier.
Romney is a brilliant, efficiency-obsessed man with an excellent record running a Wall Street vulture fund that made use of his personal abilities in a wonderfully appropriate manner. Very Hooveresque. As for the humanitarian end of things — I haven’t the slightest doubt that were the opportunity to arise, Romney would be the perfect man to organize humanitarian aid, even in the most hostile environments, for a war-ravaged Yemen or Afghanistan.
As for putting Romney the efficiency-obsessed, Wall Street vulture fund entrepreneur in the White House with the U.S. economy still stuck in near-neutral blahs? I would suggest that in 2012 we really, really do NOT need a Hoover clone at the helm.
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