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May 27, 2016
News India Times
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Government Is Not A Business The modern presidents who achieved the most – Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan – had virtually no commercial background
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t the heart of Donald Trump’s appeal is his fame as a successful businessman. It’s why most of his supporters don’t worry about his political views or his crude rhetoric and behavior. He’s a great chief executive and will get things done. No one believes this more than Trump himself, who argues that his prowess in the commercial world amply prepares him for the presidency. “In fact I think in many ways building a great business is actually harder,” he told GQ last year. There is some debate about Trump’s record as a businessman. He inherited a considerable fortune from his father and, by some accounts, would be wealthier today if he had simply invested in a stock index fund. His greatest skill has been to play a successful businessman on his television show “The Apprentice.” Regardless, it is fair to say that Trump has formidable skills in marketing. He has been able to create a brand around his name like few others. The real problem is that these talents might prove largely irrelevant because commerce is quite different from government. The modern presidents who achieved the most – Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan – had virtually no commercial background. Some who did, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover, fared worse in the White House. There is no clear pattern. One of the few successful CEOs who did well in Washington is Robert Rubin. A former head of Goldman Sachs, he served as the chief White House aide on economics and then treasury secretary in Bill Clinton’s administration. When he left Washington, he reflected in his memoirs that he had developed “a deep respect for the differences between the public and private sectors.” “In business, the single, overriding purpose is to make a profit,” he wrote. “Government, on the other hand, deals with a vast number of legitimate and often potentially competing objectives — for ex-
ample, energy production versus environmental protection, or safety regulations versus productivity. This complexity of goals brings a corresponding complexity of process.” He then noted that a big difference between the two realms is that no political leader, not even the president, has the kind of authority every corporate chief does. CEOs can hire and fire based on performance, pay bonuses to incentivize their subordinates, and promote capable people aggressively. By contrast, Rubin pointed out that he had the authority to hire and fire fewer than 100 of the 160,000 people who worked under him at the Treasury Department. Even the president has limited authority and mostly has to
Fareed Zakaria Columnist The Washington Post
persuade rather than command. This is a feature, not a flaw, of American democracy. Power is checked, balanced and counterbalanced to ensure that no one branch is too powerful and that individual liberty can flourish. It is no accident that Trump admires Vladimir Putin, who doesn’t have to deal with the complications of modern democratic government and can simply get things done. In interviews with the New York Times, Trump imagined his first 100 days in office: He would summon congressional leaders to lobster dinners at Mar-a-Lago, threaten CEOs in negotiations at the White House (“The Oval Office would be an amazing place [from which] to negotiate”) and make great deals. When talking about the positions he would fill, Trump explained, “I want people in those jobs who care about winning. The U.N. isn’t
Success in business is important, honorable and deeply admirable. But it requires a particular set of skills that are often very different from those that produce success in government doing anything to end the big conflicts in the world, so you need an ambassador who would win by really shaking up the U.N.” This displays an astonishing lack of understanding about the world. The United Nations can’t end conflicts because it has no power. That rests with sovereign governments (unless Trump wants to cede U.S. authority to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon). The notion that all it would take is a strong U.S. ambassador to shake up the U.N., end conflicts and “win” is utterly removed from reality. Yet it is a perfect example of business thinking applied in a completely alien context. Success in business is important, honorable and deeply admirable. But it requires a particular set of skills that are often very different from those that produce success in government. As Walter Lippmann wrote in 1930 about Herbert Hoover, possibly the most admired business leader of his age, “It is true, of course, that a politician who is ignorant of business, law, and engineering will move in a closed circle of jobs and unrealities. . . . But the] popular notion that administering a government is like administering a private corporation, that it is just business, or housekeeping, or engineering, is a misunderstanding. The political art deals with matters peculiar to politics, with a complex of material circumstances, of historic deposit, of human passion, for which the problems of business or engineering as such do not provide an analogy.”
Diversity Not All About Skin Color
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or Freida Pinto, diversity is not about being "black or brown" or isn't just confined to what one sees on camera but is what goes behind it. The U.S.-based Indian actress, who found fame with the Oscar winning "Slumdog Millionaire", says unless the debate on diversity extends beyond skin color, it is "pointless and redundant". From veteran actors like Shashi Kapoor, Kabir Bedi, Amitabh Bachchan, Anupam Kher, Anil Kapoor and Lillete Dubey to names like Irrfan Khan, Nimrat Kaur, Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone – Indian actors have made their mark in foreign filmdom. While most of them have evaded stereotypical presentation, Freida feels there's a need to broaden the definition of 'diversity'. "Everybody wants to talk about diversity, but I like to broaden the definition. It is not
just diversity in terms of ethnicity and skin colour, as in black or brown. It has become a redundant conversation. It is not about representing people on sexual orientation. That should never be a barrier for the kind of roles that people play," Freida told IANS over phone. She added: "I think diversity is a compulsory subject matter and, yes, there is a certain issue in films. But look at the world... It does not look like a white persons' world. There are all different kinds of people in it and all different kinds of actors and languages." The 31-year-old, who has already worked with the likes of actor Christian Bale and filmmaker Woody Allen, feels there is a need to focus on other important aspects of filmmaking than just see what meets the eye. She said: "It is not only the representation that you see on camera; what about the people who write, what about the peo-
By Sugandha Rawal
ple who direct, what about the people who produce? So for me, diversity becomes a very pointless conversation after a while if people are only talking about and sticking to colour of skin. "Colour of the skin is not diversity." In a short span of her career in the entertainment industry, Freida has carved out a niche of her own in world cinema through her roles in films like "Miral", "Day of the Falcon", "Immortals", "Desert Dancer" and "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". Freida was also seen with Bale in Terrence Malick's film "Knight of Cups", which brought to light Hollywood's underbelly. On her part, she is glad that she didn't wander on "the path where there is a lot of negativity" in the industry. "There is a lot of criticism, a lot of temptation that is always around you and I could see it. I was pretty much protected by the group of people around me and I never had one of the things."