The U. S. Presidency, CEOs, and Acid Trips

I was reading The Economist (yeah, I know, another of my failings) a few weeks ago. The cover’s headline, “America’s Next CEO?”, made me wonder why we think the U.S. presidency is a chief executive position.

I also wonder when we as a country fell in love with chief executive officers. Is it the money they make? The power they wield? Is it the Don’s comb over and the way his “you’re fired” becomes a fantasy—we’d like to say this to a lot of people and have the same effect?

Why do we think that the answer to all our economic and social woes in this country lies in the election of a CEO?

Here’s an acid-trip dream I had last night.

CEO Trump is elected president. He believes that the biggest problem with the country lies in its “mission, vision, and values proposition” (good MBA concepts). As a good CEO, Trump calls his senior executives into a meeting and they recreate the U.S.’s  mission, vision, and value propositions.  “How are we going to make money unless we have alignment?” asks the CEO.

Secondly, in his first days in the White House, he calls for a summit in which he asks for a U.S. SWOT analysis (strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats—another MBA 101 concept), and resulting short- and long-term strategic plan for the U.S.

The newly minted vision, mission and strategic plan related to the SWOT are then given to the Congress to implement.

CEO Trump is discouraged that Congress does not act quickly. He calls Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi into his office and says “You’re Fired.” Their heads droop and they file out. Then he throws a CEO tantrum and threatens to fire the rest of the Congress if they don’t act on his vision and strategy immediately. They hop to it, hoping for a win.

I woke up in a cold sweat, laughing hysterically, with a vow to stay away from whatever it was that caused this bout of late night flight fright.

Instead, I’m adding insult to injury by putting on my professorial hat. I’m not all that smart, but have had some smart students/CEOs over the years. So, I’ve been going over faded yellow legal pad sheets reflecting almost 30 years of professing about business in leadership and business strategy classes and in executive training rooms to soothe my wondering mind.

Here’s what leaked out.

Businesses: The mission of businesses is the delivery of the best goods and/or services in a particular industry. Bottom line: Businesses are to make the most money possible, resulting in the best possible returns and profits, while keeping the business healthy and growing over some specified period of time.

Businesses are run so as to not act against their best economic interests.

The United States: The mission of U. S. is to maintain its sovereignty and protect its citizens while upholding its constitution, as continually defined by a system of checks and balances. Bottom line: The U.S. keeps its citizens free and safe to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

The U.S. is not a business. The country has no specific, identifiable, goods or services that it delivers in or to any particular industry. Revenues and expenses, while important considerations, are not the sole, or necessarily primary, metrics of this organization. For example, in its history U.S. leaders have opted to wage war to protect its interests, and/or cut taxes and/or increase spending for this or that, even though it was clear that these choices were fiscally questionable. Greater good, or some such concepts, prevailed.

Chief executive officers are almost solely accountable for businesses’ successes. Although they may answer to owners/boards/stockholders, they are specifically, by nature of their positions, charged with keeping the organization fiscally healthy. By virtue of their positions, chief executive officers may make unilateral decisions about the business, and act on them. By the nature of their position, people in the organizations below them, whose jobs are dependent on doing so, say “Yes sir/ma’am”.

Chief executive officers are not elected by the people they lead. While there are political aspects to their jobs, politics does not define the job.

Presidents are responsible to the citizens of the U.S. for their decisions. Their decisions can never be made unilaterally. Even Executive Orders are subject to popular opinions, and the opinions voiced and actions made by the other two branches in relation to the decisions. 

Three branches of government are accountable for the organization called the United States of America, of which the presidency is only one.

Presidents are elected by the people they lead. By design, politics govern the positions.

While it would might be great to have a gunslinger chief executive officer in the White House to entertain old professors like me, I’m thinking that what we see on shows like The Apprentice are not really that entertaining when it comes to our life and liberty as citizens.