Failure

Etch a Sketch keeps on repeating over and over and over again his mantra about Hopey Changey’s “failed Presidency.” Hopey failed, the narrative goes, because he is not a businessman and, therefore, does not understand economics and business like Etch a Sketch and other business CEOs do.  As a consequence of his lack of business leadership experience,  according the Etch a Sketch logic, Hopey Changey was unable to bring the country out of the Bush recession as fast as he should have.

Sure-- he killed off Bin Laden and passed a health care bill identical to Massachusetts Romneycare for the whole nation, but any third rate President would have done the same thing.  Even Jimmy Carter.

Let’s break this argument down, starting with the benefits of CEO leadership.

What do CEO’s typically do to benefit America?

1. 
     1. They make bucket loads of money for themselves and make sure not to share any of it with lower level executives, workers or shareholders.

  2.They fire people. (This establishes better discipline.)

  3. They appoint their cronies to the company boards of directors. (This insures that their salaries will continue shoot into the stratosphere and maybe even outer space.) [i]

 4. They demand and get immense perks, like private planes and exclusive hotel rooms.

Book About the Nation Within A Nation

     5.  Some of them get their own islands. (e.g. Richard Branson’s Necker island in the BVIs.) Others move into Richistan, a country within the country composed of gigantic micmansions inside gated communities with their own law enforcement, road maintenance, gardeners, yacht maintenance, golf courses, and other necessities required to free them from any and all contact or association with the hoi polloi. (Read the wonderful anthropological study of the nation of Richistan by Robert Frank.)

    6. They get their companies to take on back-breaking debt (because debt is tax deductible and because the company is probably going broke and there is no other way to get the cash to keep their salaries up).

    7. They send all the company's remaining profits (assuming anything is left in the till after paying their salary) to offshore tax havens so as to reduce U.S. corporate taxes to zero, and, meanwhile, shut down factories in the US, sending the jobs to China.

      8. And finally, after valiantly achieving all these difficult objectives, they drive the entire company off the cliff. (Countrywide Finance, Citigroup, Kodak, Enron, Lehman Brothers; the list is endless.)

These are exactly the kind of people we want to lead America to the promised land.

Newt Gingrich calls them "vulture capitalists." One well-known psychotherapist and political commentator calls them "sociopaths."  I call them "obnoxious shitheads."

A good example of great business leadership by a sociopath shithead--and how it translates to politics, would be, John Corzine. Once a leading CEO, then a politician, now a CEO again. According to CNN Money, Corzine lost $1.6 billion dollars… as in “lost and cannot be found”. It mysteriously disappeared from customer accounts at his firm, MF Global. Now he is headed for jail. (By the way, the cash was luckily found in a suitcase at LaGuardia.)

Management experts say that CEOs have bad strategic thinking because of what it takes to get to the CEO position in the first place.[ii]

Dr. Tim Irwin, a student of business leadership, says that CEOs today typically have similar characteristics. He studied big company CEOs like Carley Fiorina of HP, Bob Nardelli of Home Depot,  Durk Jager, Steven Heyer, Frank Raines of Fannie Mae,  and Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros.

According to Irwin’s book “Derailed,”  chief executives are often the smartest and most respected individuals in their industries, with glittering resumes and histories of successful leadership. Yet they astonish us by driving the train dramatically off course, blinded by unchecked power and arrogance. 

The characteristics that got a 21st century CEO his job are the same ones that make them think they would be great political leaders. 

What are these characteristics? Think John Corzine.

According to Irwin’s studies, the keys to getting to the top in today’s large corporations are qualities that can lead to big problems for the companies concerned and their beleaguered shareholders.  Typically, says Dr. Irwin, the CEO gets to the top through competence combined with arrogance, dismissiveness, egotism, ruthlessness, and a lack of self-awareness.

These ingredients get you to the top of the dog-eat-dog battle for executive supremacy, but they also lead to extreme personal greed at the expense of the rest of the company.

For example, Nardelli created a 9-car parking space for himself at the Home Depot corporate headquarters with a private elevator to his own office, ruining the morale in the rest of the company.  Nardelli even went so far as to tell board members not to bother to come to board meetings. Home Depot got into serious financial difficulty before the board was able to unload Nardelli. He took home a gigantic bundle after almost reducing the company to a worthless rubble.

In one of the most incredible episodes of CEO wreckage, reported today by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times, the CEO of Chesapeake Energy, Aubrey K. McClendon was caught with a secret hedge fund making millions by trading in commodities against his own company! The company lost $71 mill and its shares are in the dumpster, but McClendon is raking it in.

It's all good though  because according to Etch a Sketch's mentor at Bain Capital, "having a small elite with vast wealth is good for the poor and middle class." (Quote of Mitt Romney's friend andmentor at Bain, Edward Conard, as reported by Adam Davidson in The Purpose of Spectacular Wealth, According to a Spectacularly Wealthy Guy, NY Times, May 1, 2012.)

Psychologist, Wray Herbert, explains the recent research conducted on how to spot the kind of leader in business or politics who is dangerous fruitcake. Check out Herbert's fascinating Huffington Post article out here. The dangerous ones may be brilliant and successful but they have "an unsettling disregard for others' needs, shallow emotions and lack of remorse and empathy...also ... signs of narcissism, like bragging a lot, [is seen] in many adult psychopaths."


One clue might be cruelty to animals (as in dogs.)

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[i] David Stockman, The Great Deformation: How Crony Capitalism Corrupted Free Markets and Democracy. Also see the interview on bill Moyers.  

[ii] Roger Martin, “Why CEOs are Bad at Strategy,” Harvard Business Review.