Run U.S. like a business? Not so fast
Brash capitalists have long boasted that Washington could use their business acumen. So how’s that working out for you, America? President Trump never held political office until January. All he knew was the head-butting and chest-thumping of the New York real estate industry. Nine weeks into his presidency, the wreckage is already piling up around him. It turns out that business swagger might not be all it takes to run a country.
I’ve been accused of being antibusiness — or specifically, antitech industry, as Forbes magazine recently charged. But I’m not against all corporate moguls, just the jerks.
Take Travis Kalanick … please. The Uber overlord has been much in the news lately, and not in a good way. There was his cuddle-fest with Trump, until his customers let him know how they felt about that. Then there was the video that showed how much Kalanick valued the opinions of his drivers — who, by the way, are not employees. They’re “partners,” and as
such, are not due the rights and benefits accorded mere workers. Don’t you just love the new tech-speak?
Then there was the open letter by Susan Fowler, one of Uber’s few female engineers, explaining why she felt so creeped out by the company’s frat house environment that she fled the premises. She was soon followed out the door by Uber President Jeff Jones, who decided after just six months on the job that the values “that have guided my career are inconsistent with what I saw and experienced at Uber.” What you see and experience, Jeff ? He preferred not to share the grisly details.
The PR got so bad for Uber that three senior female executives arranged a media conference call last week to insist that Kalanick is learning from his mistakes and is becoming a big boy. The new, improved Kalanick himself skipped the call, so it was up to the grownups, like Uber board member Arianna Huffington, to make the case for him. (Maybe he was busy plotting his own entry into politics.) “There can be no room at Uber for brilliant jerks,” Huffington told reporters. I wonder who she had in mind?
When I was running Salon, the online publication I started way back in the dot-com era, I met lots of self-adoring entrepreneurs and executives like Kalanick and Trump. They were an interesting breed. Brilliant, hard-driving … and a little mad. I remember a meeting with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in his Seattle headquarters to discuss a possible business deal between our companies, under which the retail giant would link to Salon’s book reviews and we in turn would link to Amazon’s buy pages. It was a novel idea way back then, and Bezos’ executive team was excited about it. Bezos, however, saw things differently.
“Let me get this straight,” he said, his voice rising. “You want me to send my big pipeline of customers to your site?”
Well, yeah, we said, as his underlings — who clearly had experienced their boss’ mercurial behavior before — looked nervously down at the floor.
“I might as well stick a gun in my mouth and blow my f— head off!” Bezos erupted. He mimed sticking the barrel of the gun in his mouth for added emphasis.
Awkward silence. But moments later, after some further discussion of how the deal could work to Amazon’s benefit and not just Salon’s, Bezos had a sudden change of heart. He offered to buy Salon. “What are you worth?” he asked. From rejected suitor to bride in a flash!
It was the right move for Amazon, and if I’d taken the deal, I probably wouldn’t be writing this column today. I’d be retired in a picturesque village in Tuscany, trying my hand at watercolors. But for some reason, I just didn’t want to be under the thumb of, um, a colorful personality like Bezos.
There are many men and women at the top of the business world who are absolute wonders at that thing they do. Figuring out how to get books and shoes and deodorant from warehouses into the hands of customers at blinding speed. Or undercutting the taxi industry by using “partners” instead of drivers, and someday replacing those partners with robots. That sort of thing. But you don’t necessarily want to be managed by men like this — or be governed by them.
Which brings us back to Trump and all the president’s men, those former captains of industry and finance who want to run the country like a corporation. And dismantle government in the process.
If you want to know more about the extreme corporatist philosophy behind the Trump administration, you must read Jane Mayer’s recent New Yorker magazine profile of Robert Mercer, the deeply weird and reclusive hedge fund tycoon who not only helped finance and direct the Trump campaign, but installed such key policymakers as Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway in the president’s inner circle. Mercer is a genius when it comes to building predictive investment models. But the painfully shy billionaire (he prefers cats to people) has some rather eccentric ideas when it comes to the world at large.
Mercer, according to the profile, thinks African Americans were better off before the civil rights movement, climate change is scientific bunk, and nuclear war wouldn’t be all that bad for those who survived it. Oh, and he also apparently thinks that Bill and Hillary Clinton were drug runners and murderers.
A radical libertarian, Mercer has no problem reducing government to a shambles. Enter Trump. “And if the president’s a bozo? (Mercer’s) fine with that. He wants it to fall down,” a Mercer business colleague told Mayer.
America loves its roguish business titans and deal makers. They have their place in the jungle of the marketplace. But if you let them inside Washington’s marbled halls, where the people’s business must be conducted, you can expect a lot of damage and rubble. We’ll be cleaning up after Trump and Mercer for years.