Romney has presented himself as master problem solver, the author writes. The fallacy of the CEO president

Is it safe to assume that a successful CEO is uniquely prepared to be president? No more than it is safe to assume a successful president is uniquely prepared to be CEO. This, at least, is what I tell students in my leadership class. The response aims to make them think hard about the common traits successful leaders across professions share — and to think harder about the very different challenges they face.

For his part, Mitt Romney has staked his presidential ambitions on the answer to the first question being yes — an unequivocal, resounding yes. He is not alone in his opinion. For many people, success in business suggests a special fitness for presidential leadership. They have a point, insofar as accomplished CEOs typically possess an aptitude for rigorous analysis, strategic thinking, and organizational efficiency. These are indispensable skills for any chief executive, but they are also more relevant to solving problems than defining them.


Throughout the primaries, Romney has presented himself as master problem solver, a characterization that rings true with the people who knew him best at Harvard Business School, where he graduated in the top 5% of his class. In a recent New York Times story, Kim B. Clark, a former dean of the business school described his old friend as someone who possessed the “natural instincts to be a problem solver” and “thrived on facts and data.”

Romney’s enduring achievement in public life is a testament both to the power and principal limit of such instincts. When he became governor of Massachusetts, Romney looked for a public policy problem to solve commensurate with his considerable political ambition. And what better problem than health care (or the lack thereof)? Romney went to work crafting a bill to ensure universal coverage for the people of Massachusetts. For those who could not afford insurance, assistance was provided them. For those who could, a state-run insurance broker was established to help them. And for those who refused, penalties were imposed.

When he signed it into law, the Massachusetts health care bill must have seemed to Romney like the kind of historic achievement that showcased his talents as a public policy problem solver. As the chief executive of a major state, he had organized a diverse team of academics, business leaders, and government officials and spearheaded a problem-solving process that looked for the best ideas irrespective of ideological imprimatur.

But what happens when people can’t agree on the problem or, for that matter, the ideological parameters in which it ought to be resolved? Such disagreements are central to politics — Does life begin at conception? Is health care a right? Should we end the Fed? But they are more foreign to business. As Milton Friedman famously argued, the moral imperative and raison d’être of private enterprise are one. “[T]here is one and only one social responsibility of business,” Friedman said, “to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Insofar as CEOs have embraced Friedman’s contention, they have relieved themselves of the kind of the moral and ideological debates that dominate Capitol Hill. How do you legally make as much money as possible for your shareholders? is the fundamental problem of business, and solving that problem is the chief responsibility of a CEO.

The central conceit of Romney’s campaign has been that the ailing economy is the fundamental problem of this election and that he, Mitt Romney, is uniquely qualified to solve it. Such a frame plays to Romney’s managerial expertise, and for most of the primary season, the other Republican candidates have not challenged it. In recent weeks, however, Rick Santorum has taken aim at Romney’s contention by suggesting that the American people are more inclined to elect a leader who champions a vision for the country than an aspiring Manager-in-Chief. “We’re going to win with ideas,” he recently told the gathering of conservative activists at CPAC, “We’re going to win with contrast. We’re going to win by making Barack Obama and his failed policies the issue in this race.”

Santorum’s argument dovetails with Newt Gingrich’s “Big Ideas, Big Solutions” rhetoric. It also hearkens back to the way in which Barry Goldwater and his supporters famously framed the 1964 primary campaign against Nelson Rockefeller, another moderate northeastern governor, as “A Choice, Not an Echo.” Romney, for his part, has stumbled in his efforts to respond. At the same CPAC gathering, he proclaimed himself “severely conservative,” an awkward attempt to epitomize an ideologue rather than express an ideology.

Of course, nothing of Romney’s past suggests, either as a matter of style or substance, that he has a strong ideological bent. As another friend and former classmate of his said in the Times article, beyond matters of family and faith, Romney “is a relativist, a pragmatist, and a problem solver.” This is evident in how he crafted the Massachusetts health care plan, but even more so in how he now defends it. Throughout the campaign, Romney has maintained that all he did was provide a state solution to a state problem. He doesn’t suggest his efforts have a moral salience, nor does he take sides in the debate over whether government mandates are an affront to personal liberty. He only notes that, at the state level, such mandates are constitutionally permissible, and when pressed on the broader philosophical point, as he was by Santorum in the most recent debate, his response —“it’s not worth getting angry about”— embodies the same spirit of dispassionate analysis that has made Romney a successful businessman and a lackluster candidate.

With his superior resources and impressive resume, Romney is still on track to win the Republican nomination, but Santorum is right to suggest that managerial expertise is a slender reed on which to base a presidential campaign. In the general election, the candidate with the professional experience most relevant to being president will be the president, regardless of the GOP nominee. At the same time, President Obama has shown himself ready to wage a campaign on the direction of the country, a debate about the fundamental problems the nation faces rather than how they might be solved.

This leaves Romney to argue that the election turns on executive competence, an unenviable task under any circumstances but one made even harder by a strengthening economy. It is also an effort that lends itself to an electoral choice not between two leaders, but between a leader and a boss. This is not a dynamic that Romney should embrace. A leader tends to inspire you, while a boss threatens to fire you. For voters in November, this won’t be a very hard decision to make.

John Paul Rollert is a doctoral student at the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He teaches business ethics and leadership at the Harvard Extension School.