The Hiring of the President

It’s Mitt Romney’s mantra: America needs a leader with strong business credentials. Yet history shows the opposite—private-sector successes flopped in office. Meanwhile, there is one important kind of experience Romney may not have.

By Todd S. Purdum, Vanity Fair

Of all the aptitudes and attributes Mitt Romney likes to cite as having prepared him to be an effective president, the one credential he returns to most emphatically is his lifetime career in business. “I’ve lived in the real economy,” he said at one point during the primaries. “For 25 years, I spent my life in business. I only spent four years as a governor, and I joke that I didn’t inhale. I’m still a business guy, all right? I know how to lead us out of this stagnant Obama economy and into a job-creating recovery.” More recently Romney suggested that, in addition to the constitutional requirements that a president be a natural-born citizen and at least 35 years old, there should be a requirement that a president have several years working in business.

Romney makes his assertions about the importance of business experience so eagerly and so often as to suggest that the relationship between business success and presidential success is simply a given. The only problem with the claim is that there’s no evidence to suggest it’s true.

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