One business man who was president in my lifetime was Harry Truman. This haberdasher from Missouri has several enormous accomplishments which certainly did not derive from his experience as a businessman. His business went bankrupt after a few years. Nice looking store though. The photo is from his museum in Independence, Mo.
The Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WW2 certainly was beyond the ken of his original business plan. It was a remarkable success. He also integrated the armed forces by executive order, a bold move in those times. And he approved the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Japan when the war was about over? (What a business sense!)
Another business man was Jimmy Carter. He was a farmer from Georgia. He also did a lot of good things, most notably was getting some kind of peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, again a great bold accomplishment for those times, and one which has not been equaled in negotiations since by other presidents. Was this his business acumen at work in these negotiations? I wonder. He was also famous for wearing a sweater in the White House, and turning down the heat to save energy, and of course it was his fault for having the US embassy captured by Iranian radicals.
Two other businessman made it to the presidency, both named Bush. They were into oil, and that didn’t seem to help, other than to get us into two wars to preserve our oil interests in Iraq or Kuwait. I have difficulty understanding how a businessman, W., who ran a baseball team (Texas Rangers), who traded away Sammy Sosa to the Cubs after only a few games with the Rangers (averaged 42 homeruns per season through out 18 years in the majors and was MVP 9 times) , how does running this business qualify him to be president?
So that covers the businessmen who have been president since I was a kid. (For the record, Warren Harding and Herbert Hoover were very successful businessmen before they entered office, but they were before my time.) Of the others, 5 were (are) lawyers; there was a general, an actor, and a teacher.
FDR was probably the greatest and most influential. He brought the country out of depression and through WW2. He inspired people with his rhetoric and gave American and the world a hopeful message. Being a business man probably would have curtailed his vision and hampered his instincts to lead rather than follow the old paths.
Dwight Eisenhower was a general. He presided over 8 years of peace. He warned us about business- the military-industrial complex.
John Kennedy inspired everyone at that time with his rhetoric “What can you do for your country?” and his plan to put a man on the moon. No businessman would have thought of that.
Lyndon Johnson, the teacher, who eventually entangled us in the Vietnam War, did some good things with medicare and civil rights reform.
Even that “crook” (I am not a crook) Richard Nixon, an attorney, opened the doors to trade with China. I think he sent a ping-pong team over there to soften them up. (Or did he exchange pandas.) No businessman would have thought of these things.
And of course there was the actor Ronald Reagan who somehow managed to cut and raise taxes at the same time, and is a saint in some circles for the way he managed the government, and solved international problems (Tear down this wall).
And more recently, our two attorneys, Clinton and Obama, both getting in trouble- Clinton with personal issues and being impeached, and Obama with all sorts of lawsuits over the constitutionality of his the ACA. But both of these men inspire Americans in some way by laying out a vision that is fair and just for all.
So, back to the proposal by Romney to require presidents to have 3 years of business experience. It’s a non starter. Give me inspiration, creative genius, compassion, complex reasoning, lifelong learners, and that will be my choice for president.
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