America, Inc.

I saw this article and it instatntly reminded me of so many conversations I've had with business minded folks about the state of this country. Most of the time these conversations came down to what really matters -- dollars and cents, i.e. the budget. Often times this discussion took a political philosophy turn and we discussed how Bush, despite all his posturing, is as far from conservative (at least on the economic front) as one could get. Richard Hofstadter would call him a pseduo-conservative.

If Bush were CEO, he'd be fired, says business executive

Comparing the United States to a troubled private corporation, a business executive in Salon this morning says that if President Bush were the CEO of a private company, its board would send him packing.

Warren Hellman founded Hellman & Friedman, a private equity investment firm, and was the youngest employee ever appointed partner at Lehman Brothers. Noting that Bush is the first president with a Master's degree in Business Administration, he writes in Salon that "if the United States were a company, it would be a troubled one," pointing to Bush's shortcomings in managing the national budget, its poor warfighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other crises.