“California is poised once again to compete for the crown as the nation’s leading graveyard for business superstars trying to make the jump into politics,” writes Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times.
The commentary is here.
Why do big-time CEOs — Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, for example — make such terrible politicians? Much of it has to do with their failure in the “very special business of democracy,” as he puts it.
•”Engagement in democracy starts with participation in the ballot box. That’s the real significance of Whitman’s and Fiorina’s well-documented failures to vote over the years,” Michael writes.
•Neither has served a public apprenticeship as well.
•Government isn’t a business. “These include caring for the penniless; maintaining common amenities such as parks, schools, and universities; and creating infrastructure with broad value but unspecific beneficiaries, such as freeways and the Internet,” Michael writes.
I would add another key point: If you don’t get your way, you can more easily be “fired” by the voters than the other way around. After all, it’s a democracy.
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