Story highlights Jon D. Michaels: Business titans -- like Rockefeller, Mellon, and McNamara -- have been Cabinet secretaries before

What's different today is a lack of experience in public service and a new relationship between government and business, he says

Jon D. Michaels is a professor of law at the UCLA School of Law, where he teaches and writes about administrative law, national security law, privatization, and the separation of powers. He is currently working on a book, tentatively titled "Still No Angels: America's Enduring Commitment to Separation of Powers from Madison to FDR to Trump" (forthcoming, Harvard University Press). Unless otherwise noted below, facts reflect research for his scholarly projects. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) President-elect Donald Trump's proposed Cabinet looks straight out of central casting -- only it's for the wrong movie. His choices to lead the Departments of Education, Labor, State, and Treasury are all former business executives. They're perfectly suited to serve as corporate directors of any Fortune 500 company. But as heads of America's most important agencies, they're a troubling fit.

Jon D. Michaels

In fairness to the president-elect, corporate chieftains have a long and distinguished history of public service. Banker and industrialist Andrew Mellon directed the Treasury Department for over 10 years. Automotive executives Charles Wilson and Robert McNamara both headed the Pentagon, while former American Motors Corporation chairman George Romney led the Department of Housing and Urban Development (after a stint as governor of Michigan). And Nelson Rockefeller ran various Rockefeller family businesses before serving in the Eisenhower White House, as a four-term governor of New York, and as Gerald Ford's vice president.

But there is something different -- and more vexing -- about CEOs descending on Washington today, and under this particular president.

The business world has changed. Business leaders are far less public spirited than they once were. In generations past, business leaders like J.P. Morgan aspired to be public statesmen. Let's not sugarcoat the past: they weren't angels. But they did regularly work to promote the general welfare, at times disadvantaging their firms in the process.

Today's business leaders are cut from a different cloth. Their "experience" with government is more in line with that of Trump's choice for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson. To the extent we can speak of Tillerson as having experience, it is as a globetrotting cheerleader for ExxonMobil.