George Bush, CEO of the United States

There have been a number of very good posts by other bloggers lately, discussing the pros and cons of George Bush as the first MBA president. And as this WSJ article [sorry, subscription required] makes clear, the cons lately are outweighing the pros by a pretty wide margin.

What strikes me, in reading the article, is that as light is shed on the inner workings of the Bush administration how similar it appears to be to the C-suite at such fine corporations as Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, Worldcom, etc.

Officials who have worked with Mr. Bush as governor and president say his administration is striking for its internal discipline. There is little debate at cabinet meetings or other private councils, which mainly serve as forums that let Mr. Bush restate his goals and hear each official's report, according to past participants. Leaks and public disagreements aren't tolerated. His circle of advisers is small, and he isn't a "walk around" manager who tries to canvass opinions from a variety of officials.

"Organizational leadership is one of the strengths of the nation's first MBA president," presidential scholar Fred Greenstein recently wrote in a new Bush chapter to his book, "The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton."

But now he qualifies that praise. "It's clearly not a team that's humming very well," Mr. Greenstein says. He gives some of the blame to a "flawed deliberative style" that has placed an incurious delegator among soul mates.

Indeed, recent events have provoked management expert Warren Bennis at the University of Southern California to write a Bush critique he has tentatively titled "It's Not (All) About Rumsfeld," a reference to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. In it, he criticizes "the president's failure to create a culture of candor within his administration -- one that forces his subordinates to tell him what he must know, not what they think he wants to hear."

In a number of interviews, Bush watchers, including many Republicans, cite other problems the administration has weathered that reflect some of the same management shortcomings. Among them are the use of bad intelligence to detail the case on Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction and Mr. Bush's subsequent resistance to calls for an independent investigation of prewar intelligence. The list also includes the administration's withholding from Congress an analyst's projection that the Medicare prescription-drug benefit would cost far more than the $400 billion over 10 years that Mr. Bush had cited during debate on the benefit.

"A continuing problem for the administration is that they fail to adapt after their initial policy assumptions turn out to be false," says Roger Cressey, who served on the National Security Council staff under the current administration and President Clinton. "There is a stubbornness not to admit mistakes or show weakness, which is a clear reflection of the president's management style."

[...]

Bush watchers, including supporters, see the pitfalls of the Bush dynamic at play in aspects of the prison-abuse scandal. Observers in both parties say his "Don't Mess with Texas" rhetoric -- used to enunciate war goals such as "smoke 'em out" and "bring 'em on" -- clearly has influenced some of those on the ground in Iraq.

Mr. Bush, along with Mr. Rumsfeld, early on in the war on terror declared the U.S. wouldn't be formally bound by the Geneva Conventions on treatment of suspected al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and designated them "unlawful combatants." Critics say the decision, while it didn't apply to Iraqi prisoners, sent a broader signal of disdain for humanitarian codes.

And it still isn't clear just what Mr. Bush knew of the reports of abuses in Iraqi prisons that at this point go back more than a year. Mr. Greenstein, in his updated book, recalls that as governor Mr. Bush neither read a report on a bonfire that killed a number of state university students nor an executive summary. As for the photos that sparked the prisoner-abuse furor, neither Mr. Rumsfeld nor Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers told Mr. Bush of them before they were broadcast by CBS -- even though Gen. Myers had already persuaded CBS to wait two weeks before airing them.

For a long while, executives at Enron and the rest were able to outrun events. Their stock price remained high, profits appeared to be growing, they were able to bully or silence analysts who questioned their business models or their expenses. But, eventually, events caught up. The stock price falls, uncovering shaky accounting, complacent auditor suddenly gets cold feet, etc.

I think we're seeing that now. Bush and his "executives" have been running this country on (perhaps literally) a wing and a prayer, and now they find they're running out of runway. Iraq is spiralling out of control, disgruntled former (and current) cabinet members are squealing, the auditors (Congress) are getting squeamish, and the previously fawning press are no longer hailing Bush as Hero CEO.

Bush's business model is wacked. Hopefully, voters are taking notice.