From Pine View Farm

A Picture Is Worth, the Art of the Con Dept. 0

Photo of paragraph from Trump's Art of the Deal:

Dick Polman comments on the notion that you can “run the government like a business”:

. . . every time a Trump fan said on TV that we needed a businessman like him to run America, I laughed out loud. I had the same reaction, post-election, when a Trumpy conservative website, The Daily Caller, giddily predicted that Trump would change Washington “by running it like one of his successful, profitable businesses. Why not use a proven framework? … Trump could turn the United States of America into a productive, streamlined corporation.”

I marveled at this naivete for two reasons: Trump was a terrible role model, having been bailed out of six bankruptcies by a dwindling number of indulgent investors; and there’s no historical record of any businessman successfully running America as a business.

The sole career businessman ever elected to the presidency was mining magnate Herbert Hoover. He was touted in 1928 as a problem-solver who’d bring his engineering skills to the public sector. You know what happened next. The stock market crashed, and as the Great Depression deepened, Hoover made things worse because he couldn’t communicate, cajole, compromise, or inspire. He fatally lacked the political skills required of a president.

More Polman at the link.

Image via PoliticalProf.

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