Businessmen in Politics

There's multiple fallacies in comparing what a businessman has "accomplished" vs. what a politician has done in office, completely aside from the question of whether a politician is corruptly influenced.

Business and government are two different worlds. The aim of a business is to make money for the owner(s) of the business. That's it. A business owner may CHOOSE to be socially conscious, pay her employees more than the law or the market require, give to charitable organizations, CARE about the employees, but none of that is possible without turning a profit. The role of government is to provide services, or to provide security, not to be profitable. A business owner may discontinue a product or a division that is unprofitable, but you don't close down a government department because it's not bringing in enough cash. Even the most successful CEO necessarily has different goals than a government official. You can't criticize a legislator because he didn't "create jobs" and a business owner won't make a good Senator because he did.

Then there's the issue of accountability. CEOs of large companies are virtual dictators in their own companies. Of course in publicly held businesses there is a board of directors that theoretically has authority over the CEO and other management. In practice, however, as long as the CEO is presiding over increasing profits and there are no embarrassing public ethical lapses that they think may affect profits, the CEO has free reign. In private, or in family companies, the CEO is even more unaccountable.

Once a CEO becomes an elected official they are often in for a rude awakening. If she becomes a Senator or Representative, there is the shock of not being the ultimate authority and being part of a collegial body that only has authority as a body. If in an executive position, e.g. a state governor or the U.S. President, then they're in the unfamiliar position of having to work with a legislature to get anything done, and if the majority in the legislature is from the other party, then the job is that much harder. Both our governor, Pete Ricketts, and the President came to office thinking that they could just rule by fiat. Ricketts not as much as Trump, although Ricketts was shocked that some registered Republicans in the Unicameral did not automatically support his ideas. Trump seemed completely ignorant that Congress actually writes the laws and he cannot just do whatever he wants.

Finally, we now have the spectacle of someone who got into the White House by playing a successful businessman on television! Some of us have known all along, but the latest revelations about Trump's tax returns show that Trump was a horrible businessman. He consistently bankrupted his holdings, spent lavishly on investments that showed little potential for recouping that investment. He was only successful at convincing people that he was successful. And he took this ineptitude into the highest office in the land.