We Tried It The Other Way

3:02 am EST November 26th, 2009 | News | 5 Comments

Conservatives are pushing this chart that shows low private sector experience from the Obama administration. Now, I’ve got no way to independently verify the chart’s accuracy (and if history is any guide, data pushed by right wing blogs and think tanks rarely bares any resemblance to the truth), but quite frankly we have tried it the other way and it failed in the most recent administration.

I know conservatives don’t like when you bring up history, especially recent history (according to them, everything was great until January 20,2009 when a dictator assumed control of America), but in 2000-1 we endlessly heard that one of George W. Bush’s virtues was that he would be a “CEO president”. The first president with an MBA, they said. Of course, they started downplaying that when the Enron scandals hit. And a CEO president delegating control of important government agencies to unqualified cronies in Iraq, New Orleans, and the White House became a symptom of the rot of conservative politics.

Quite frankly the Obama administration official with the strongest private sector chops is Tim Geithner, and he’s the one with whom folks on the left seem to have the least confidence in (not necessarily unwarranted, in my point of view).

Is private sector experience good to have? Maybe. But I don’t feel, nor does history show, that it has any serious bearing on performance. George W. Bush had oodles of experience in the world of nepotistic crony capitalism. It helped to make him one of the most horrible presidents in our history.

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5 Responses to “We Tried It The Other Way”

  1. jr says:
    November 26, 2009 at 1:48 pm

    CEO presidents continue to read kids books during terror attacks

  2. NCSenior says:
    November 26, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    In my 40 years of private and public employment, I found that good leaders are like good athletes. Training and experience may make you adeguate at either, but the truly great ones just seem to be born with superior abilities.

  3. Porlock Junior says:
    November 27, 2009 at 3:02 am

    Sit down somewhere stable and prepare for a shock: The chart is complete bullshit. Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub has the numbers.

    Of course, we have to qualify this statement, since we’re not Republicans. The original posting gives no actual basis for the chart whatever. “I have this friend who has a problem…” is not really a source. And there is no hint whatever of what those percentages are; they seem to be the amount of what compared to WTF???. So, the AEI wizards can reconstrue it in any ludicrous way they like in order to get something to fit. Nonetheless, MFB’s ofice-by-office listing makes the bullshit clear enough.

    Sorry, I can’t resist flogging this poor imitation of a dead horse. I guess the senior member of the Cabinet, the Secretary of State, has no private-sector experience at all, eh? Gee wow, and just a few years ago her private-sector work was notoriously corrupt and all that. Well, you lie on one side, might as well lie on the other. You don’t wanna get bedsores.

  4. timmy says:
    November 27, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Howz the saying go… bullshit spewed about one’s enemy is doubly believed. Good times for the hoax troll.

  5. Duros62 says:
    November 27, 2009 at 1:17 pm

    I guess it depends on the private job, no?
    I mean head of an Arabian Horse Association seems eminently qualified to run FEMA, right?