Robert F. Bruner

“I didn’t leave the Republican Party. I felt that the Party left me.” –Ben Bernanke ^[1]

Bernanke’s comment came to mind with the serial departures of CEOs from President Trump’s business advisory groups. Robert Iger (CEO of Disney) and Elon Musk (CEO of Tesla) quit Trump’s Strategic and Policy Forum after the President’s abandonment of the Paris climate accord. Then, two days ago Ken Frazier, CEO of Merck, resigned from the American Manufacturing Council over Trump’s hesitation to denounce the racists and alt-right violence in Charlottesville last weekend. The CEOs of Under Armour and Intel resigned from the council later that day as did Scott Paul, the president of the Alliance for American Manufacturing. Yesterday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka bailed out.

Was this an easy or difficult decision for the departing CEOs? What about the CEOs who remain on those councils: what are they thinking? The issue has attracted pointed advice from Lawrence Summers: “Why don’t all CEOs quit Trump’s advisory councils?” In addition, Andrew Ross Sorkin asked, “How can people like Adebayo O. Ogunlesi, a director of Goldman Sachs and an infrastructure investor, remain a member … [and] remain silent?”

The dilemma for the remaining CEOs begs the larger question: under what circumstances would you quit a presidential advisory body? Suppose you know a CEO serving on such a council who feels a high dissonance between personal and presidential values; he or she comes to you for advice about whether to stay or go: what would you say?

First, ask, don’t tell. Most CEOs are smart and pragmatic: they can figure it out for themselves if engaged interactively. Here are some questions for the dissonant CEO:

1. Why did you join in the first place? Perhaps you were motivated by Duty to the country and to public service. And Washington is an endlessly fascinating echo-chamber that can provide interesting diversion from issues back at the company. Or perhaps self-interest plays a role: like Trump, you contemplate a campaign for national office and need some public service to show the prospective voters. Or maybe you joined for the good of the company. An advisory council might become an opportunity to influence the development of government policy related to your business concerns. It could boost access for you to the president and senior administration members. It can be important to have a place at the table when big decisions are made. Plus, it is awfully hard to say ‘no’ when the president extends an invitation: the prestige and ego gratification can be immense. On the other hand, your Fortune 500 Company probably already has a large government relations staff in Washington right now along with a small army of paid lobbyists. Are these people doing their jobs? If so, is your participation on this council truly a good use of your scarce time? The opportunity cost of your participation on the council must be a considerable concern.

2. Why did the president invite you? He told you that you are important and he really needs your help. Maybe you are a Republican and/or a campaign contributor and he appealed to The Cause that brought you together. But consider this: if the President really wanted your advice, he could pick up the phone and contact you any time. Did the President need you to join a council to get your ear? Realistically, the creation of the council and his invitation for you to join reflect two needs. The first is a political need: the president is the leader of a grand coalition to various subgroups of which he needs to signal affinity. By organizing a business advisory council, the president shows his proximity to the business-centric part of the Republican base. The second need is branding and positioning: by managing photo ops with the likes of Elon Musk of Tesla or Robert Iger of Disney or Kevin Plank of Under Armour, a president can bond to what is “cool” in the world of business, be it new technology, hot cars, better entertainment, or snappier clothing. In short, advisory boards are a means by which a president can appropriate some of the street cred of celebrity business leaders. Should a CEO want to provide this kind of reputational endorsement?

3. What is the purpose of the council? And how effective is it? Purpose and effectiveness link inextricably. Generally, the clearer the mission and sharper the focus, the greater will be the impact. But as the first two questions suggest, there are all kinds of motives for participants in such councils, enough to create gridlock, mission drift, and useless conversation. Is the council just about talk, or will it produce a report of some kind? Who will receive and respond to the report? Most importantly, who will lead this council and what processes will that leader follow? To be clear, special commissions and councils composed of volunteer (unpaid) citizens have had valuable impact on government policy (two good examples are the Rogers Commission to investigate the space shuttle Challenger disaster and the Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research). However, the best of efforts of some other groups have flopped. For instance, the Bowles-Simpson National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform produced a praiseworthy report to reduce the federal deficit that drew scant action. Does a CEO have time for a vague purpose or an ineffective outcome?

4. What is the source of dissonance? What (if anything) makes you uncomfortable about being on this council? Every CEO lives in a space that is simply flooded with conflicting interests. Dissonance is daily fare. Many issues might warrant your empathy, but only a few are likely to warrant your time and energy. How should one prioritize? If the dissonance arises from some conflict about deep values or purpose, one should pay close attention. For Fortune 500 CEOs, matters of diversity, racism, and violence certainly warrant such attention. Prominent companies openly espouse a commitment to diversity and inclusion. To stay silent when presidential behavior or policy contradicts that commitment would appear to excuse or endorse it. Setting a priority is never easy in the moment; but viewed over the longer term, the world you hope your children and grandchildren will live in, the priorities become clearer. How do you want history to judge you?

5. Can you possibly make a difference in influencing policy to be more consistent with your values? On the answer to this hinges the more profound question, Is the White House listening? By now, your answers to the previous four questions will shape your answers here. The opportunity for personal impact on issues of importance to you and your company is a common justification for not quitting in the face of dissonance. Even if you are the only dissident on the council, your voice might cause others to reconsider, get more information, or reach out to their own constituents. Giving your own feedback and criticism in the most direct voice possible might save the situation. Perhaps, if a report is to be rendered, you could issue a minority dissent report, much as Justices do on the Supreme Court. If, however, the council’s processes marginalize, ignore, or exclude you, it’s time to go.

6. What are the consequences if you quit? Perhaps no one at the White House will pick up the phone if you call about a problem. Perhaps someone went to bat to get you invited onto the council and now will feel burned. Perhaps the President will tweet criticisms about you. Perhaps the president’s ardent supporters will murmur that you’re a disruptive crybaby, who added nothing to the council’s work anyway—or the character assassination could be worse. But the odds are that the bad stuff will end quickly and that meanwhile you’ll get kudos from like-minded people. Quitting a president’s business advisory council may hurt like ripping off a Band-Aid, but doing so accelerates the healing. Similarly, you could consider the consequences if you stay. The longer you participate on the council, the more you are associated with the council’s outcomes and the president’s policies.

In theory, one has a third alternative: stay, but check out mentally and emotionally. Leave your name on the marquee but beg off from meetings, ignore the email stream, and don’t return phone calls from council staffers. If people complain, just allude to the rigors of business today. But this is a nonstarter for the CEOs I’ve known. Typically, they are direct people who, if they commit to a group, will follow through. It’s the all-or-nothing bias of CEOs that would heighten the dissonance they can feel.

The decision of whether to quit or stay in President Trump’s business councils is a specific example of a fascinating problem in political economy. In his classic book, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Albert O. Hirschman argued that a high rate of exit or “churn” in an organization is a symptom of illness and is typically caused by a toxic culture and the suppression of dissent. Churn is costly, not just economically, but also in physical and spiritual terms. Leading businesses have tried for years to lift retention and reduce churn in customers, employees, suppliers, and investors. We should watch out for more departures from President Trump’s councils as a telltale of (in)stability within the administration—and listen carefully as any more CEOs go: you may hear the echoes of Ben Bernanke’s lament.

A coda: Charlottesville is quiet today, though to all of us here, the protests and violence of last weekend remain alarming. The racism of the KKK, Neo-Nazis, and alt-Right is reprehensible and reminds us that we still have work to do to bind up our society. At the same time, no one I’ve met wants to shrink from the challenge. No one I know is decamping. There is a lot of “voice” today, which one can take as a healthy sign. At a mass meeting of the Darden Community on two days ago, we heard new and returning students, alumni, faculty, and staff members express spirited determination to work toward creating the community and nation of our aspirations. I’m especially inspired by our students who bring energy, optimism, and high purpose to the task. And I’m staying put with the rest of them.

1. A quotation from Bernanke’s Memoir, The Courage to Act, and reported in Newsmax October 7, 2015, at http://www.newsmax.com/Finance/StreetTalk/Ben-Bernanke-Republican-Party-GOP-Federal-Reserve/2015/10/07/id/695078/. [↩]

Earlier this month, Melissa Thomas-Hunt and I convened another session in our faculty series on case teaching.  This was focused on “Getting the Best out of the Quiet Student.”  Here’s a sketch of what we discussed. 

 

At the outset, we took a poll of the colleagues gathered in the room:

What is the breadth of student participation in your course on any given day?  [Pretty uneven.  A few students talk readily; the majority of students contribute a little; a few students are silent.]

Who would like to see more class participation? [Virtually all hands went up.]

Among LPs, UPs, and Fs, how significant to the result was the contribution of class participation? [General agreement: pretty significant.]

Are you an introvert? [Some faculty members had taken the Myers-Briggs personality inventory test and rated as introverts.  Such a result is typical for academicians.]

Some people gain energy from interaction with other people—these are called extroverts.  On the other hand, people who turn inward for energy are introverts.  In her book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain discusses the important contributions that a quiet person makes.  And she reserves some trenchant comments for higher education in general and business schools in particular.  Her TED talk on YouTube, “The Power of Introverts,” gives a sampling. 

 

Why “quiet?”

 

Students can be quiet for many reasons.  It is a mistake to assume that the quiet student is disinterested or unprepared for class.  Illness or lack of sleep would render anyone less engaged in classroom discussion.  Cultural background may explain some quiet students: certain cultures instill great deference to the teacher and discourage the student from questioning or inserting personal opinions in class.  Or maybe the school or section has a strong in-group that sets up a “cool culture,” in which students hoping to belong won’t violate: in one culture there is a saying that “the nail that sticks out gets hammered.” 

 

Susan Cain notes three classic profiles of the quiet student: a) the introvert who thinks before speaking; b) the shy student who fears humiliation in front of others; and c) the hyper-sensitive student who pays acute attention to everything and simply can’t process all the data fast enough.  It is easy to think of other possible profiles, too.  The important point is that students differ; they are not homogeneous: one size does not fit all. 

 

If teachers want to succeed in developing their students, it’s important to learn something about why an individual student is quiet.  Some actions recommended by our colleagues were:

Check the context.  Is there a “cool culture” prevailing in the section or at the school that could discourage outsiders from participating?  Is a virus going around?  Did the students just get exam or recruiting results back?  Is now the toughest part of the course? Anyway, are all the students unusually quiet in your class?

Check the history.  Is there something in the student’s background that might discourage class participation? 

Triangulate.  Is that student quiet in other courses too?  Is he or she generally reclusive or isolated?

Ask the student.  It could be as simple as greeting a student in the hallway and asking, “How is it going? “ or saying “We would love to hear more from you.”  A practice of some instructors is to send all students a mid-course participation feedback and to request a meeting with those students who have participated least–letting the student know where he or she stands in class has the benefits of transparency and motivation.  Of course, requesting a formal meeting with a quiet-because-fearful student might serve to amplify such fears.  Go easy, at first.

Check your own assumptions.  Be careful about framing any of this diagnostic information in a way that tilts the conclusions consistent with an implicit bias.  The answer to “Why quiet?” is usually more complicated than a stereotype might allow.

Anyway, why do we call on students in class?

 

This last point triggered an extended discussion about the purpose of calling on a student, especially “cold-calling.”  We pondered whether we do a disservice to our students by curating classroom discussions in a way that overvalues extroversion?  Are we discouraging “quiet” leaders who bring significant value in business?  Many of us like to teach by the case method because doing so helps to model leadership, the ability to draw ideas and action plans out of a diverse group—the Latin root for the word, “educate,” is “educe,” which means to “lead out.”  Drawing the best out of people through conversation is fundamental to leadership.  Therefore, we call on students in class to model and exercise leadership.  Our calling has many purposes:

Motivates and sets expectations.  No free-riding or passive resistance.  The student is a member of our classroom community and is obliged to contribute to the success of the whole enterprise.  Everyone owns the outcome, not just the teacher.  Calling can nudge the student into higher levels of participation.  Participating in a business discussion is a learned skill, which may not come naturally.  Do all students want to stick their necks out?  Probably not.

Evaluates.  The teacher might call on a student to check what the student knows or is thinking.  And calling helps the teacher make a real-time assessment about the state of the whole conversation.

Communicates care and interest in the student.

Highlights.  Cold-calling in the middle of class can signal importance in the question being asked.

Engages.  Help everyone get into the conversation.  Help to direct the conversation to quiet parts of the room.

Enlarges.  Maybe the class conversation is dominated by one point of view.  A cold-call can get more ideas and bring in other perspectives. 

Pivots.  Inject new lines of inquiry

Socializes.  Through calling students into the case discussion, we exercise their capacity to advance their ideas into a conversation.

What to do?

 

Melissa and I posed a mini-case study about a quiet student, and the difficulty that the instructor was having in drawing that student into classroom discussion.  Suppose a colleague came to you with that problem, what advice might you offer?

Write to the quiet student.  Express your concern for the student’s low participation and invite a meeting to discuss an action plan to improve.

Act like an ally, not an adversary.

Emphasize that a case discussion is a conversation that belongs to all of us.  Every person has an obligation to sustain the quality and energy of the conversation.

Pause more when you see hands in the air.  Introverts take a moment to process a question and frame a reply.

When planning to call a quiet student into a discussion, think carefully about how you will frame the question.  Extroverts will respond by answering the question they want to answer.  But introverts will tend to respond to your question, and probably want to please you with a response.  Therefore, frame the question thoughtfully.

Tactics to draw quiet students in:

Invite them to summarize conflicting points of view or positions taken by others.  This offers a relatively low-risk opportunity to talk.

Ask if they understand what someone else just said.

At the end of a class, ask the quiet students which other students helped them with the biggest impact on their learning that day.

At orientation, reaffirm the value of participation.

Reflect: what implicit assumptions are there in the culture of the section about when it is appropriate to talk?

Reflect: if the students, in general, are too quiet, it is possible that you are doing too much telling, and not enough asking.

The hour flew by.  And the group of assembled colleagues seemed to have plenty more to say.  Perhaps we should reconvene on this topic again in the fall.  Subjects tabled for some date in the future would include how the “quiet” temperament fits into conventional models of leadership; should a school actually recruit for attributes of “quiet”?  And is there a “cool culture” at school?

 

This session and the previous two (here and here) lend a basis for reflection by the instructor.  With the forthcoming break at the end of the semester (and for some, the summer), this is a useful time to take stock.  Best wishes to all for renewal in the weeks ahead!

 

 

 

So much of the art of teaching by the case method involves asking rather than telling.   We teach this way out of a belief and considerable evidence that learning “sticks” when a student makes his or her own sense of an idea, as opposed to passively memorizing it.  And one of the most important decisions a case teacher must make is choosing where the “sense-making” should begin.  Do you start with first principles, or somewhere higher up the intellectual ladder?   I would guess that most teachers in graduate business school opt for higher up.  But when you have a diverse student body, it is helpful to have some supporting materials for your case studies that can help level the playing field.  These materials are typically called “technical notes.”  How and where should one use them?

 

Darden faculty gathered recently for a seminar on teaching at Darden led by Yael Grushka-Cockayne and myself.  The subject was “Exploiting Technical Notes and Other Supplements for the Learner.”  At the outset, a show of hands suggested that some 80% of the attendees had written technical notes; and virtually all of the instructors had used them.  Of course, defining a “tech note” might include all kinds of didactic materials, such as a Darden Business Publishing tech note, Harvard Business Review article, review paper, book chapter, research working paper, a webpage, and a video.   Getting the most out of technical notes is a challenge relevant to all case teachers.  What are some of the considerations or best practices about using technical notes?

 

Our discussion grappled with four sets of questions:

• Whether or not to use technical notes.  We began by asking why colleagues have chosen to use tech notes—or why they have consciously NOT used them.  Here are some responses:

 

Why use technical notes?

Why NOT use technical notes?

§  Explain things for the non-technical student: theory, research findings.  Give examples. §  Might accelerate learning.  “Turbo-charge” the class discussion.  Show a process or method to be used in preparing to discuss a case study. §  Serve to squeeze in ideas in a short space of time. §  Free up time for other interesting discussion topics.  Might help to lift the richness of case discussions to a higher level. §  Can help to sustain substance of the curriculum at a high level. §  Control the message a bit: no right answers, but many wrong ones…here’s what to watch out for. §  Generally, support the learning objectives for the module or course.

§  Learning “sticks” when it is acquired through problem solving.  Tech notes might short-circuit the self-discovery through problem solving. §  Might conflict with learning objectives. §  Disconnects the student from the “real world,” tilts the tone of learning from practice to scholarship. §  Might create dependence or passivity. §  Must be tailored to the readiness of the student and the position in the course. §  Different students experience tech notes in various ways—using tech notes is not guarantee of general learning. §  Too easy to use a good note in the wrong way.  Different tech notes serve different purposes: a) “this is how you bake the cake” versus b) “these are the ingredients, now you decide how to bake.” §  Cannot truly substitute for the richness of student-faculty interaction. §  We want to promote students to think critically about the world, not just accept conclusions. §  Can take students into minutiae before they master the “major muscle movement.”

 

• If we must use them, should we assign them for reading before or after the class—or even, maybe embed a technical presentation within the case for the day?  The answer depends on the learning strategy that the instructor adopts and the instructors learning objective for the session.  Exactly what will be the growth to be achieved that day?  Sometimes, students’ struggle with solving a problem can help motivate learning the tools and concepts embedded in a tech note.
• How much should we rely on technical notes in our curriculum?  At Darden, perhaps a quarter of the learning materials we distribute students are didactic presentations of one kind or another.  Clearly, tech notes are a major component of the student learning experience at a case method b-school.  The colleagues in our session seemed to believe that the mix of cases and technical material was about right.  One said that what mattered was not the bulk or mix of learning materials to students, but rather, what happens in the classroom.  Another pointed out that most of our tech notes are tailored to marry with our case studies and that such tailoring has a huge benefit. 
• What is happening in our environment that might drive the greater use of technical notes?  Colleagues cited changes in program design (such as shorter course lengths), rising expectations of mastery for MBA students, and smarter students. These factors might contribute to both students and faculty feeling the need to include more tech notes to supplement the face-to-face sessions.

 

Colleagues ended the session by concluding that our use of technical notes needs to be driven by learning strategies, for the program, for individual courses, and for individual class sessions.  It is easy to get over-reliant on didactic material, at the expense of deep learning from human debate over chewy dilemmas.  Plainly, the tech note is a useful tool, but one to be used thoughtfully.

 

 

“Tell me and I forget; teach me and I may remember; involve me and I learn.”

–        Benjamin Franklin

 

The seasoned learner is highly relevant to the work of graduate professional schools generally and business schools in particular, where virtually all of the students are mature learners.  Residential MBA students at Darden average about 28 years old; EMBA students range in their 30s and 40s; and executive education students range up to senior managers in their late 50s.  What difference does the presence of a “seasoned learner” make to the professional school instructor?  The point of this blog post is to consider some of the opportunities and challenges—and how to address them. 

 

Kristin Behfar ^[1] and I convened an informal teaching seminar for faculty, focused on teaching the “seasoned” learner.  Our discussion consolidated wisdom from participants around the following points.

 

1.      What distinguishes the seasoned learner from the novice?

a.      The seasoned learner brings considerable experience and a mental model of the world into the classroom.

b.      The seasoned learner aspires for some self-determination in shaping the learning experience.

c.      The seasoned learner is focused on fulfilling goals and needs, and on building competency on issues related to practice rather than on merely building mastery of a subject. The seasoned learner asks, “How can I use these ideas?” 

d.      The seasoned learner wants to connect and learn from all others in the learning space, not just the instructor.

e.      Teaching the seasoned learner presents a very different set of challenges and opportunities compared to teaching children—as the following table suggests.

 

	Teaching Children	Teaching Adults (or “the seasoned learner”)
Concept of the learner	A dependent.  Teacher takes responsibility for determining what/when/how of learning.	Increasing self-directedness.  Teacher guides and develops the learner’s movement from dependence to self-directedness.
Role of learner’s experience.	Learner’s experience is of less worth.  Teacher’s experience is of more worth.	Adults = big reservoir of experience, a resource for learning.  Adults attach more meaning to learnings they gain from experience.
Readiness to learn	Ready to learn differs by age group.  Therefore, standardized curriculum by age. Evaluation is by the teacher.	Adults are ready to learn when they experience a need to learn. Teacher is responsible to help learners discover their “need to know”—provide diagnostic experiences to measure the gaps in competencies.  Need to involve learners in the process of planning their own learning.  Need to involve more self-evaluation.  Need to time learning in step with developmental tasks.
Orientation to learning	Education is a process of acquiring subject-matter content.  Therefore, curriculum should be organized into subject-matter units.	Adults see education as a process of developing increased competence to achieve their full potential in life.  Therefore, curriculum should be organized around competency-development categories.  Focus should be problem areas, not subjects.  The learning/teaching transaction is the mutual responsibility of learners and teachers.  Focus more on experiential techniques, with emphasis on practical application.

Source: Points synthesized from Malcolm S. Knowles The Modern Practice of Adult Education: From Pedagogy to Andragogy

 

2.      If goals and needs matter to the seasoned learner, how can an instructor learn about these from the students?  A key precept of student-centered teaching is to start from where the students are. 

a.      Class cards and resumes.  These can be pretty weak sources of insight—you may learn what’s great about the student, but less about needs and goals.

b.      Breakfast, lunch, coffee, dinner, receptions—active listening.

c.      Teaching teams (section faculty, Exec Ed program faculty, the faculty in any team-taught course).  Share insights among each other.  Role of the team leader is important in bringing faculty together.

d.      At the opening class, ASK the students: Why are you here?  Why do you care? What do you want to learn?  What challenges are you facing?  What are your expectations?

3.      If connectivity matters, how can the instructor promote it?

a.      Give students tasks to perform together.

b.      Focus on problem-centered learning—ask students to bring their experiences to the problems.

c.      Physically locate the student in useful ways.  (For instance, the iLab affords students to sit together at circular tables.)

d.      Set ground-rules at the start of a course that help to create a “safe space.”  (Speak freely.  What is said in the classroom stays in the classroom.)

4.      If self-determination matters to the seasoned learner, how can the instructor harness it to draw learnings from the course?

a.      Promote student self-evaluation to help them assess their own growth and/or the existence of any gaps between their aspirations and their level of development.

b.      ASK the students what meanings they have drawn from the educational experience.

c.      Frame exercises and assignments in a way to promote student-generated insights.

5.      The flow of our hour together in this session exemplified the overarching way to think about teaching the seasoned learner.  1) Begin with a clear understanding of the seasoned learner’s wants and needs (Be student-centered: start from where the students are.)  2. Design the learning process to harness the experience of the learners through exercises, applications to practice, and growth of connectivity among students.  3) Ask students to make their own meaning from the educational experience, rather than simply telling them such meaning.  4) From the students’ own meanings, draw more insights about their wants and needs.  This suggests a cycle of work for the teacher of the seasoned learner:

 

 

The big message of our work on the “seasoned learner” is that didactic, push-driven, teacher-centered teaching isn’t likely to work so well with such students.  So, adapt!  Draw on the richness that the seasoned learner brings to class.  Benjamin Franklin, an iconic life-long learner, said it well, “involve me and I learn.” 

1. I’m especially grateful to Kristin for her collaboration on this subject.  She brought great insight and wisdom to our work. [↩]

In contrast to previous years, I will be brief, forgoing my usual exhortation to read more books in the belief that if you’re reading this blog, you are probably doing a lot of reading anyway. And I’ll dispense with telling you how many books I’ve read this year, since doing so always triggers a flurry of email inquiring how I read so much (short answer: I’m a professor and reading a lot is part of my job.) For more suggestions, you can consult my previous recommendations or this gargantuan compilation of hundreds of other lists of recommended books.

Here are some of the best books I’ve read over the past 12 months. They deserve special attention and have my enthusiastic support.

• Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner, Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
  Excellent discussion of the attributes of good forecasters and why forecasting is so difficult. Valuable to all business professionals.

• Duncan Watts, Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer
  Excellent discussion of the difficulty of inferring insights from social data.

• John Reader, Africa: A Biography of the Continent
  A comprehensive history of Africa. A foundationally important book for anyone who wants to understand how it got to where it is.

• Robert J. Shiller, Finance and the Good Society
  Shiller argues that finance is an instrument for improving society—a welcome antidote to the political rhetoric in recent years.

• Roger Lowenstein, America’s Bank
  An entertaining and insightful history of the Fed.

• Jimmy Carter, Turning Point
  Carter’s memoir of his entry into politics. He fights electoral corruption in Georgia in his first campaign—and wins. It reads like a thriller.

• Morgan Ricks, The Money Problem
  A somewhat technical book for aficionados of financial system stability. And I highly recommend it for Ricks’ erudition and wisdom.

• David Wessel, In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic
  Perhaps the best one-volume history of the Panic of 2008.

• Abby Smith Rumsey, When We Are No More: How Digital Memory is Shaping Our Future
  Confronts the ephemerality of digital records and the vital importance of preserving books for future generations.

And best wishes to you and your loved ones for the holidays and the New Year.

As I write this concluding post for the fall semester, the present context gives more meaning to our readings about the Great Depression.  Donald Trump’s startling win in the Presidential election, the buoyant estimates for infrastructure spending (maybe $1 trillion) under the new administration, and the vaulting gains in the stock market invite two questions.  First, is the new talk about higher economic growth for real?  Second, what kind of fiscal stimulus is consistent with the higher growth outlook?  This isn’t the place to try to answer those questions.  But if economic growth is the topic du jour, then our recent reading and discussion were very timely. 

 

For the fourth meeting of our seminar, Richard A. Mayo and I assigned Barry Eichengreen’s The Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses—and Misuses—of History.  This session afforded an economic “long view” of the entire period, afforded a comparison with the Great Recession of 2009-2015, and raised several conceptual points. 

 

The Long View: 1929-1939

 

The depths reached in the Great Depression between 1929 and 1933 were bad enough to qualify it for the record books.  But equally stunning was the duration of under-performance.  Popular thinking considers that the Depression ran until 1939.  But as Figure 1 shows, unemployment did not fall below the level of December 1929 until 1943. 

 

 

Source: Author’s graph, with data from https://www.thebalance.com/us-gdp-by-year-3305543

 

And after the breathtaking deflation of 1930-1932, prices would not surpass the level of 1928 until 1942.  But the conventional measure of economic welfare, Gross Domestic Product per Capita, surpassed the previous peak (1929) as late as 1940 (see Figure 2).

 

Source: Author’s graph, with data based on estimates by Angus Maddison, from http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2012/09/us-real-per-capita-gdp-from-18702001.html.

 

Visible in the two graphs is the fact that the Great Depression actually consisted of two slumps: 1929-1933 and 1937-38.  In between was an episode of healthy per capita GDP growth of 7.05% (1934), 6.9% (1935), and a whopping 13.5% (1936).   

 

The year, 1936, proved pivotal not only for economic growth, but for several new themes that enriched further our understanding of the Great Depression.

1.      Rise of populism.  Social and civic stress blossomed into various kinds of social protest.  Labor unions strengthened and struck.  Radio broadcaster Father Charles Coughlin fanned popular anger with virulent anti-establishment, anti-elite, anti-semitic, and nationalistic messages. Senator Huey Long sought to “make every man a king” through a “share the wealth program.”   Communist sympathizers pointed to the supposedly robust health of the USSR and excoriated the capitalist system.  Fascists pointed to Hitler and Mussolini as exemplars for fixing American government. The populist sentiments pulled FDR to the left in an effort to retain his coalition.  Indeed, his speeches and messages criticized monopoly power, the wealthy, and private enterprise as causes of the slow recovery; the President attacked “economic royalists.”  This change in tone had the effect of legitimizing the message of social protest and alarming business decision-makers.  Robert Higgs has argued that the intervention in markets, rising regulation, and hostility toward business created investment uncertainty that brought on the second slump.  In contrast, Barry Eichengreen cites rising labor costs as a depressant on economic growth in the late 1930s, reflecting growing union militancy.

2.      Shift from reform to relief.  The legislative record of FDR’s first term substantially consisted of new laws and regulations designed to make the economic system fairer and more stable, and to promote recovery.  FDR sought to “save capitalism” by reforming the system.  In December, 1933, John Maynard Keynes had written to FDR, criticizing him for emphasizing reform over relief.  Notwithstanding the legislative successes of his first term, employment had not recovered.  Furthermore, the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional the National Industrial Recovery Act (the centerpiece of FDR’s reforms) and other New Deal laws.  Shortly after his re-election, FDR sought to “pack” the Supreme Court by increasing the number of justices from nine to 15; but Congress balked.  With that, FDR pivoted toward policies by which the government itself would put people to work.  The so-called “Second New Deal” successfully passed the Works Progress Administration (to give unemployed Americans jobs), the Wagner Act (to give labor unions the right to organize), and the Social Security Act (to give assistance to the aged, the unemployed, dependent children and the blind.)  Moreover, FDR abandoned a commitment to balance the federal budget and endorsed deficit spending as a stimulus to economic growth.  Finally, FDR reorganized the Executive Branch and creating the Executive Office of the President to give him more targeted advice with which to motivate and direct the bureaucracy. 

3.      From national toward international.  American sentiment was isolationist during the 1930s. FDR was an economic nationalist during his first term.  And between 1935 and 1939, Congress enacted five neutrality laws to prevent engagement in foreign wars.  Isolationism was a natural outgrowth of the Depression and the memory of defaulted loans that financed allies in World War I.  However, Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937, Stalin’s “Great Purge” of 1937-38, Germany’s occupation of the Rhineland in 1936 and annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938, and the Spanish Civil War of 1936-38 awakened American policy makers to threats to world peace.  With the commencement of hostilities in Europe on September 1, 1939, FDR formalized aid to China and Britain. 

 

To this narrative of the lengthy unfolding of the Great Depression, Barry Eichengreen’s Hall of Mirrors brings a valuable perspective on at least three topics.

 

Why the Depression lasted so long.  Eichengreen points to the steep trajectory of recovery from 1933 to 1936 and implies that at that rate, the depression would have ended soon.  Indeed, looking at Figure 2 and extending the slope of recovery in 1936 forward in time, it seems plausible that the Depression would have returned to pre-crash GDP per capita in the next year.  Eichengreen argues that the second downturn was the result of two policy errors: fiscal austerity and monetary tightening.  He wrote,

“It thus took a concerted effort by everyone from FDR on down to produce another recession.  The president had again become obsessed with balancing the budget.  Large deficits, as he saw it, were a sign that the economy was still ill.  Balancing the budget , on the other hand, would signal that the emergency was over.  Doing so would give a welcome boost to confidence.  Not for the last time in the annals of economic policy , there was also an element of political expediency involved.  Having campaigned in 1932 on a promise to balance the budget, FDR became fixated on the idea with the approach of the 1936 election.  It was not so much criticism from the Republican Right that the president feared.  Rather, he worried about a challenge from the Left in the person of the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, who…turned against him on the grounds that the New Deal was insufficiently ambitious; it marked “two years of surrender, two years of matching the puerile, puny brains of idealists against the virile viciousness of business and finance, two years of economic failure.”…Thus, balancing the budget and populist tax policies could go hand in hand.  This political strategy led FDR to push, and the Democrat-controlled Congress to agree to, higher taxes…More important, surely, was the restrictive turn in monetary policy…The decision by the Federal Reserve Board…to raise reserve requirements from 13 to 19.5 percent in August 1936, 22.5 percent in March 1937, and 26 percent in May was intended to restore the effrectiveness of the central bank’s conventional policy tools…Treasury Secretary Morgenthau was among those preoccupied by the specter of inflation…To neutralize the inflationary threat, the Treasury Department now sold bonds from its portfolio…mopping up the additional cash and removing it from circulation.”  (Pages 266-270.) 

The combined impact of actions by the Fed, Treasury, and President was highly contractionary.  Eichengreen seems to suggest that none of the three parties took a systems view or tried to understand that together they would nip recovery in the bud.

 

The Great Depression versus the Great Recession.  Hall of Mirrors is an impressive exercise in the comparison of two economic calamities.  Chapters of the book interleave episodes of the two events.  This literary approach was probably adopted to promote comparisons.  But the back-and-forth induces chronological whiplash.  The grand takeaway is that government policy makers in 2008-9 may have averted a second Great Depression, but that the long duration and slow recovery stemmed from some of the same errors as Hoover, FDR, and associates.  What went well in 2008-2014 was the generally stimulative monetary policy of central banks.  On the other side of the ledger, regulatory stabilization of financial institutions was inconsistent (think of Lehman); fiscal stimulus was too soon and where it occurred, petered out too early; given the absence of fiscal unity, the European Monetary Union seemed doomed to fail; and the lapse into fiscal austerity in the U.S. and Europe in 2010 choked off growth.   

 

Economic theories about growth.   Eichengreen argues from Keynesian principles that the length of the Great Depression and Great Recession were due to policy errors that favored austerity.  The classical Keynesian view is that downturns are attributable to slackening demand and can be reversed by government-sponsored stimulus, especially by deficit spending.  Keynes envisions that a dollar spent by government will result in more than a dollar of economic output; therefore, stimulus spending by the government can help to restore economic growth.  

 

On the other hand, neoclassical economists take the view that consumers, managers, and investors make economic decisions by looking at tradeoffs.  Therefore, cyclical downturns are due to distortions in decision-making that adversely influence the production and consumption of goods and services—what matters are the expectations of decision-makers.  Thus, Robert Barro argues that the spending multiplier might well be less than one, if an added dollar spent by the government means higher taxes and lower growth in the future to repay the debt incurred today.  In particular, supply-side economists assert that the supply of labor, products, services, and money creates demand.  Therefore, the government should deregulate and reduce tax rates to stimulate growth.  Lee Ohanian, an economist at UCLA, reviewed Hall of Mirrors and took a different view from Eichengreen and argued that government interventions in the Great Depression and in the Great Recession prevented the normal return to growth. 

 

In short, one side would urge governments to fight a depression by stimulating the economy through fiscal spending.  The other side would urge relaxing the temptation to intervene. 

 

Conclusion: the value of historical comparisons 

 

If economists can’t agree on what causes depressions and recessions, why should we engage in the exercise of comparing the crises?  (President Harry Truman famously said that if you laid economists end to end, they would point in all directions.)  The deeper question is why study history at all?  Eichengreen responds,

“The historical past is a rich repository of analogies that shape perceptions and guide public policy decisions.  Those analogies are especially influential in crises, when there is no time for reflection.  They are particularly potent when so-called experts are unable to agree on a framework for careful analytic reasoning.  They carry the most weight when there is a close correspondence between current events and an earlier historical episode.  And they resonate most powerfully when an episode is a defining moment for a country and society.” (Page 377.)

Economic and financial crises are messy and chaotic events.  There is no checklist or handbook to tell decision-makers what to do.  Under such circumstances, it seems reasonable to look at precedents for inspiration about what to do and for caution about what not to do.  In that respect, Hall of Mirrors helps to build our frame of reference by recounting two economic calamities.  While it is true that more can be said about these episodes, the book is a valuable foundation for critical thinking when (not if) we enter the next calamity.

 

Works Referenced

 

Robert J. Barro, “Government Spending is No Free Lunch,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2009.

 

Barry Eichengreen, 2015, Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession, and the Uses—and Misuses—of History, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

Robert Higgs, 1997, “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed After the War,” Independent Review, Vol. 1: 561-590.

 

Lee Ohanian, 2016, “The Great Recession in the Shadow of the Great Depression: A Review Essay on “Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, the Great Recession and the Uses and Misuses of History,” Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economics Working Paper Series #22239.

 

 

 

An important lesson of the presidency of George H.W. Bush is the importance of an identity to the success of a leader.  An identity refers not only to substance (as in an ideology) but also style (as in how one gets things done.)  Identity emerges as a crucial issue in a reading of Bush’s memoir, All the best, G. Bush: My Life in Letters and Other Writings and two biographies of him.   This is one of the oddest presidential memoirs to be found—mostly tidbits of diary and correspondence in chronological sequence, but not a narrative argument.  What did President Bush intend for us to take from this? 

 

Eleven students and I are reading our way through the autobiographies and biographies of the post-Watergate U.S. Presidents. ^[1]  George H.W. Bush brought to the White House a resume of considerable experience: decorated veteran of World War II, successful entrepreneur, Congressman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ambassador to the U.N., Chief of the U.S. Liaison Office to China, Director of Central Intelligence, and Vice President.  As President, Bush invaded Panama and arrested the military dictator, Manuel Noriega, for drug-dealing.  Bush marshalled some 80 nations in wresting Kuwait away from Saddam Hussein in 1991.  And he adroitly managed relations with China in the wake of the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989 and with USSR at the fall of the Berlin Wall and breakup of the Soviet Union.  Yet he failed to gain re-election in 1992, and joined the club of nine other Presidents who sought a second term and where defeated.  To most of these ten Presidents, history has not been kind.  Judged in the longer view, historians rank him at around #22 among all 44 Presidents.  There is no legacy for George H.W. Bush of the kind that graces the memory of his predecessor, Reagan.  Five considerations help to explain why.

 

Circumstances.  George H.W. Bush (hereafter, “Bush41,” which helps to distinguish the 41^st President from his son, the 43^rd President, “Bush43”) presided over massive changes in geopolitical history.  The dissolution of the USSR and reunification of Germany narrowly escaped a crackdown and coup attempt by Soviet hardliners.  The massacre at Tiananmen Square threatened to derail the rapprochement with China.   The invasion of Kuwait by Iraq in 1990 and the massing of Iraq’s troops on the border with Saudi Arabia threatened stability in the Middle East.  For his careful handling of these temblors, historians grant him good to very good marks.

 

Bush41 also inherited the legacy of the Reagan Revolution that had achieved tax cuts without offsetting budget cuts.  The S&L Crisis and onset of a recession in 1990 threatened to deliver record-setting government deficits.  In reaction, the Republican coalition fractured, and generated two populist challengers on the right, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan.

 

Character.  Much is made of Bush41’s privileged background.  He was the son of a successful banker who was elected U.S. Senator.  His mother instilled strong values of loyalty, respect, service, and the “obligation to lead” (page 391).  The first eight pages of his memoir are a glossary of names that reveal a great deal about what Bush41 valued: “close,” “closest,” “friend,” “trusted,” describe almost half of them.  Other themes that figure heavily in describing those he values are loyalty, support, intelligence, integrity, honesty and respect.  More than any other presidential memoir, Bush41 displays a strong relational bent.  His memoir is riddled with references to “faith, family, friends” (page 391), “family is key” (page 388).  In describing his reaction to the loss of the presidency in 1992, Bush41 wrote,

“Hard to describe the emotions of something like this…But it’s hurt, hurt, hurt and I guess it’s the pride too…be strong, be kind, be generous of spirit.  Be understanding and let people know how grateful you are.  Don’t get even…finish with a smile and some gusto and do what’s right and finish strong.” (Page 572.)

 

Choices.  Belying the image of a pampered young man from a privileged background, Bush41 repeatedly made choices that took him out of stable and secure territory.  In 1941, he graduated from Andover and enlisted in the Navy to become an aviator—this, despite a graduation speech by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson that urged his classmates to go to college.  It was dangerous service by any stretch of the imagination and prove so when he was shot down and rescued in the Pacific Ocean.  After the war, he graduated from Yale phi beta kappa, in a day when the social norm was for Yalies to get a “gentlemen’s ‘C’”.  Then he left the comforts of Connecticut to go to Texas, to sell oil-drilling equipment.  And then, offered a position with the prestigious banking firm of Brown Brothers, Harriman in New York, he declined the offer and instead started his own oil exploration firm.  He helped to build the Republican Party in Texas when being a Republican wasn’t politically acceptable.  He accepted political appointments that advisers said would mark the dead-end of his career (heading the legation in China in 1974, Director of the CIA in 1975).  This is the profile of an ambitious risk-taker, not a silk-stocking namby-pamby.

 

Judging from declarations and choices that Bush41 made, he positioned himself as a liberal Republican—notwithstanding his support of Barry Goldwater in 1964 and his acceptance of the Vice Presidency under Ronald Reagan in 1980.  He supported de-segregation in Texas in the 1960s, gay rights and family planning.  He purged John Birchers from the Texas Republican Party.  Clearly an internationalist in his reliance on diplomacy and treaties, he was willing to intervene where America’s strike force and moral authority would achieve outcomes for the global good (e.g., Kuwait and Panama.)  He believed in less government intervention in everyday life, and more volunteerism and charity. 

 

In coaching his speechwriter, Peggy Noonan, about drafting his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in 1988, he wrote,

“Vision. On the domestic side jobs, but jobs in an America that is free of drugs, that is literate, that is tolerant.  On the foreign policy side—peace, but peace in a world that offers more freedom, more democracy to the people of the world.”  (Page 351.)  “What drives me comforts me: family, faith, friends.  We have a special obligation to lead.  We must not forget our responsibility…We owe it to the free nations of the world to lead, to stay strong, to care…strive for a truly bipartisan foreign policy—and never give up on liberty.” (Page 391.)

Noonan fleshed out this brief advice into a broad summation of Bush41’s worldview: a tendency to see life as a series of missions; a “kinder, gentler nation;” gun rights; the death penalty; first rate education; drug free America; inclusion of the disabled; world peace through strength; celebration of the individual; in all, an “enduring dream and a thousand points of light,” “a message of hope and growth for every American to every American” (watch here).  And in his inaugural address of 1989 (watch here),  Bush41 said that he took as his guide “the hope of a saint: In crucial things, unity; in important things, diversity; in all things, generosity.” 

 

But viewed from the span of 28 years, these addresses look like boilerplate, mainstream Republican orthodoxy.  What, exactly, would Bush41 add to the political stew in Washington?  In what ways would he actually lead?  The acceptance speech and inaugural address presaged Bush41’s signal problem during his presidency, “the vision thing.”  People found it difficult to know what he stood for.  Timothy Naftali wrote that when Bush arrived as a new Congressman in January 1967,

“Bush’s thinking evolved once he reached Washington.  He had few, if any settled policy ideas.  What he had were tendencies: Bush disliked extremism of any kind; he preferred to seek solutions outside of the federal government; he believed in a strong defense and in strong support for the U.S. military; he preferred spending cuts over higher taxes; he opposed segregation and racial discrimination, but he was uncomfortable in having Washington mandate good behavior.  Despite his conservative temperament, Bush proved to be pragmatic and emotional.  Quickly dropping any pretense to being a Texas conservative, he allied himself with moderate civic Republicans, who believed in the goals of the Great Society and the war in Vietnam but wanted both to be managed more efficiently.” (Pages 16-17.)

As one reads or listens to Bush’s speeches in 1992, he seemed continually to be evolving.  Bush contrasted starkly with his predecessor, Reagan, who had framed a series of stirring visions for voters and who had articulated a strong ideology. Whether Bush41 could hold together the coalition of moderate and conservative Republicans would depend on his execution of the vague vision.   

 

Execution.  The memoir of Bush41 highlights several attributes about the way he executed his responsibilities:

·        He listened.  Bush41 wrote, “Leadership is listening then acting.  Leadership means respect for the other person’s point of view, weighing it, then driven by one’s own convictions, acting according to those convictions.  If you can’t listen, you can’t lead.” (Page 351.)  As a relational leader, listening is paramount.  The inclination to lead by listening proved to be of paramount importance in navigating through the international crises Bush confronted. 

·        He took measured steps in conflict.  At the massacre in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in May, 1989, Bush43 wrote, “Dad struck a careful balance…He denounced the Chinese government’s use of force and imposed limited economic sanctions…Dad drew on his personal connections and wrote a private letter to Deng Xiaoping…whom he addressed as “Dear Friend.” (Page 192.)  Bush43 summarized his father’s decision to liberate Kuwait: “I admired the way Dad handled the situation.  He had taken his time.  He had explored all options…He had rallied the world and Congress to his cause.” (Page 199.)

·        He played the long game.  Bush41’s memoir suggests that he foresaw the economic collapse of the USSR as early as the mid-1980s, but was patient.  To try to hasten change would risk arousing hardliners who might respond in force—as they ultimately tried to do in a coup d’etat against Gorbachev in 1991.  In 1990, Bush delayed recognition of the breakaway Baltic republics to temper the anxieties of Russian hardliners and gain time for a united Germany to be included in NATO.  Timothy Naftali wrote, “Thus, George H.W. Bush for a moment, at least became a great President…risked his international prestige [and negotiated the bipartisan budget] in each case Bush sacrificed short-term political gain for what he considered the national interest.” (Page 98.)

·        He dealt in relationships, not transactions.  In addition to addressing Deng on a friend-to-friend basis, he developed a similar rapport with Gorbachev.  Bush43 wrote,

“Dad’s strategy was to develop his friendship with Gorbachev while privately urging him to allow the Soviet Union to unwind peacefully.  The strategy paid off in early 1991 when Gorbachev agreed to allow a free election for President of the Russian Federation…He believed that encouraging Gorbachev—not provoke the Soviet hardliners—was the best way to avoid a crackdown…I don’t believe Gorbachev could have endured without a partner in the United States.” (Pages 212 and 214.)

·        He played by the rules.  Bush 41 defended his decision not to pursue Saddam Hussein into Iraq, and instead respected the strict limitations of the U.N. mandate to liberate Kuwait: “I still do not regret my decision to end the war when we did.  I do not believe in what I call “mission creep.”” (Page 514.)

·        In victory, he did not gloat.  Humility is one of the dominant sentiments in Bush41’s memoir.  His son echoed this attribute in describing the moment that the Berlin Wall fell in November, 1989:

“Dad faced enormous pressure to celebrate…Dad refused to give in to the pressure.  All his life, George Bush had been a humble man.  He wasn’t trying to score points for himself; he only cared about the results…Freedom had a better chance to succeed in Central and Eastern Europe if he did not provoke the Soviets to intervene in the budding revolutions.  “I’m not going to dance on the wall,” he said.” (Page 195.)

 

In other respects, Bush41 may have listened, but did not hear so well.  Here he is, recounting his response to White House aides who were worried by a possible challenge from Ross Perot in 1992:

“I told them that in three months, he will not be a worry anymore.  Perot will be defined, seen as a weirdo…Their view is that the move for change is so much outside that outsiders are in and insiders are out; and that Perot can take his money and parlay himself into victory or into a serious threat.  We need to be very wary of this, but time will tell…[On the same page in a footnote, he declared,] They were right and I was wrong.  In the final analysis, Perot cost me the election.” (Page 555.)

 

But was the problem only Perot?  Bush41 was challenged by Pat Buchanan as well.  Both challengers came from the populist right-wing of the electorate.  At the core of their challenge was Bush’s failure to shrink government spending at the moment of budget crisis in 1990 and to renege on his pledge at the 1988 nominating convention, “Read my lips: no new taxes.”  “The budget agreement was a disaster,” wrote Bush43.  It fractured the Republican Party, obscured other domestic accomplishments and reflected a poor job of communicating and defending the agreement.  Timothy Naftali wrote,

“Whether due to naivete, renewed self-confidence, or arrogance, Bush assumed that his personal charm, his honesty, and his sense of a mutual interest in good government would suppress his opponents’ interest in seeing him hurt politically…Bush became an object of increasing public scorn…made matters worse by reacting ineptly to his image problem.” (Pages 99 and 140.) 

Lyn Nofziger later commented, “He was an ineffective one-term President.  [He] walked away from the Reagan legacy and tried to create his own—and failed at that.” (In Naftali, page 161.)

 

Outcomes.  The paradox is that close observers like Nofziger deem Bush41 a “failed President,” despite the many accomplishments on Bush’s watch.  The wins would include the end of the Cold War, the successful expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait, the arrest of Manuel Noriega, the unification of Germany, the American Disabilities Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Clean Air Act Amendment of 1992, the Points of Light Project, and the appointment of two Supreme Court Justices.  Not shabby for a one-term President.

 

On the other side of the ledger, Bush41 lost to Bill Clinton and prompted moderate Republicans to flee the field.  Clinton won with 43% of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes; Bush received 38% of the popular vote and 168 electoral votes; Perot took 19% of the votes.  The right-wing populists gained momentum as the heirs to the Reagan Revolution and under the leadership of Newt Gingrich wrested leadership of the House of Representatives in 1994.  Essentially, this faction echoed the ideology of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot: cut the deficits, balance the budget, protect American industry, oppose foreign wars, and generally oppose the establishment and longstanding incumbents.

 

Epitomizing the incredible reversal in fortunes for Bush41 was his approval rating.  The following graph reveals that during Bush’s first two years, he was popular, if not even highly approved.  His rating peaked at 89% (Feb. 28, 1991) at the end of the Gulf War and hit bottom at 29% 18 months later, on July 31, 1992, at the outset of his campaign for re-election.  By the date of Clinton’s inauguration, Bush’s approval rating was back in positive territory. 

 

Source: Gallup Historical Presidential Job Approval Statistics http://www.gallup.com/poll/116677/Presidential-Approval-Ratings-Gallup-Historical-Statistics-Trends.aspx

 

In October, 1987, Newsweek magazine published a devastating cover-story article on Bush, titled, “Bush Battles the ‘Wimp Factor’”. 

“Bush suffers from a potentially crippling handicap — a perception that he isn’t strong enough or tough enough for the challenges of the Oval Office. That he is, in a single mean word, a wimp.  ‘A problem’: The epithet has made its way from the high-school locker room into everyday jargon and stuck like graffiti on Bush. What’s come to be known as the vice president’s “wimp factor” is a problem, concedes Bush pollster Robert Teeter, “because it is written and talked about so much.”… “Fairly or unfairly, voters have a deep-rooted perception of him as a guy who takes direction, who’s not a leader,” says Democratic pollster Peter Hart… (Literally. Last week the “Doonesbury” strip portrayed voters matter-of-factly describing Bush as a wimp.)…Why, then, is he so cruelly mocked? The reasons are both stylistic and substantive. Television, the medium that makes Ronald Reagan larger than life, diminishes George Bush. He does not project self-confidence, wit or warmth to television viewers. He comes across instead to many of them as stiff or silly… Beneath such surface qualms lie deeper doubts. What does Bush really stand for? His two decades in government have produced an impressive resume — congressman, U.N. ambassador, Republican Party chief, China envoy, CIA director, vice president. But his imprint on all those jobs is indistinct, even his friends admit, and he seems to have avoided the great social and political controversies of a quarter century. In short, Bush is by and large a politician without a political identity.”

Biographer Timothy Naftali wrote:

“In the nearly quarter century since his first run for federal office, Bush had yet to fashion for himself a political program.  He had coexisted with three major Republican leaders, Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan, each of whom saw the world differently, and Bush had served each of them loyally.  Many observers considered Bush’s political adaptability a sign of weakness…No one questioned the physical courage…It was his political courage that was in question.” (Page 51.)

 

The memoir of Bush41 recounted the wimp episode with emotion.

“Handlers want me to be tough now, pick a fight with somebody…the ‘wimp’ cover, and then everybody reacts—pick a fight—be tough—stand for something controversial, etc. etc.  Maybe they’re right.  But this is a hell of a time in life to start being something I’m not.  Let’s just hope the inner strength, conviction, and hopefully, honor can come through.” (Page 369.)

 

Reflections for leaders

 

What explains the unusual format of Bush’s memoir?  As with most memoirists, he wanted to explain himself, not just what he did, but who he was.  This was his last, best shot at establishing his identity.  He wrote,

“When I left office and returned to Texas in January, 1993, several friends suggested I write a memoir.  “Be sure the historians get it right,” seemed to be one common theme.  Another: “The press never really understood your heartbeat—you owe it to yourself to help people figure out who you really are.”  I was unpersuaded…Lisa Drew suggested that what was missing is a personal book, a book giving deeper insight into what my own heartbeat is, what my values are, what has motivated me in life…It’s all about heartbeat.” (Pages 21-22.)

 

George H.W. Bush offers a useful basis for thinking about the identity of a leader.  The undercurrent of Bush41’s career was the lingering question, “Who is George Bush?”  The simple answer is that a mushy vision and political adaptability render the answer, “I don’t know.”  But we can do better than that. The five elements suggest at least two dimensions along which we could size up a leader.

1.      Relational versus transactional.  What distinguished Bush41 from Reagan, Carter, or Ford was his candor about his intense network of relationships, based on family, friends, and faith.  His memoir is unlike any other presidential autobiography that one can find: rather less about policy and politics and much more about relationships.  One of the most important ways to parse leadership styles is the extent to which it is transactional versus relational.  And I hasten to add that no one who is elected to the White House is totally one or the other; but it is very useful to consider tendencies. 

 

The ultimate transactional leader is the piece-rate bargainer: everything about an exchange is measured in tangible “gives” and “gets”—think of the deal-making of Lyndon Baines Johnson or the “government by deal” implied by the early actions of Donald J. Trump.  With such a leader, extra effort or output wins immediate reward; similarly, retribution for failing to meet goals is quick and Darwinian (think of Trump’s show, The Apprentice, and “you’re fired!”)   The transactional leader may promote competition among followers.  There is no reward for assisting a colleague—it just takes time that you could be using to stay ahead.  Boiler-room sales operations work like this; in more elegant surroundings you will find that some professional services firms and financial organizations offer essentially the same environment.  To get ahead in such organizations, you must stay ahead of the average of your colleagues.  Never admit weakness.  And never hesitate to ask for a better deal.  “If you don’t ask, you don’t get” might be the cultural motto.  The transactional leader can be stressful to work for; the employment demands are clear and the consequences immediate.

 

The relational leader reflects a more complicated social contract.  What matters is the long-term relationship, not just the near-term tradeoff.  Surely, as the relationship prospers, the individual tends to prosper.  But the contract goes well beyond piece-rate and may include expectations for a contribution to the success of the team, contribution over time rather than in the moment, and contribution to quality rather than simply volume.  As the term, “relational,” implies, the glue for such leaders is not the individual transaction, but rather the strength of the network.  Relational leaders can impose big burdens on their employees, who are asked to live up to a strong internal culture; the employment demands are probably ambiguous and open-ended.

 

2.      Ideological versus pragmatic. The ideologue is dogmatic and uncompromising, adhering to principles and ideals, a focused partisan.  The principles or ideals derive from values: economic, political, social, or religious.  For the ideologue, justifying a principled stand often entails an emotional appeal to values.  In the public mind, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were ideologically-motivated leaders.  Jimmy Carter pursued the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty out of religious conviction.  To follow an ideological leader entails demonstrating loyalty by espousing the right ideas—one needs to drink the Kool-Aid, and do it in a way consistent with the ideology.

 

The pragmatist, on the other hand is focused especially on the means to achieve some goals.  “To make an omelet, you must break a few eggs,” as the French say.  Ideas are valuable if they are practically useful.  Lyndon Johnson was famous for back-room deal-making in pursuit of his Great Society programs.  Richard Nixon supposedly declared, “We’re all Keynesians now” and supported greater state intervention in markets in the midst of a financial crisis.  To follow a pragmatist leader entails achieving the right outcomes in a way that is efficient and effective.  It is not what you say, but what you do, that counts.  

 

3.      Morally courageous versus passive.  History has dealt harshly with Presidents who declined to confront and grapple with the supreme challenges of their day.  James Buchanan (1856-1860) allowed “bleeding Kansas” to bleed and did virtually nothing to stop the momentum toward civil war.  Andrew Johnson (1865-1868) declined to implement policies to integrate liberated slaves into society.  “Moral courage,” the willingness to fight or confront problems, is the premier attribute of a leader, according to the memoir by Ulysses S. Grant (1868-1876).  And Theodore Roosevelt wrote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  (Speech at the Sorbonne, April 23, 1910.) 

 

Our readings about George H.W. Bush suggest that he tended to be a relational pragmatist—and he showed remarkable moral courage at important moments in his career.  Ironically, his adaptability, and his ability to engage with virtually everyone, and his inarticulate summation of what he stood for contributed to his defeat.  A sense of identity makes it easier for followers to know what the leader stands for.  It will be a topic of enduring discussion in our seminar whether the leader chooses the identity, or the times confer the identity on the leader.  The answer resides in the interdependence among circumstances, character, choices, execution, and outcomes.

Works Referenced

 

George H.W. Bush, All the Best: My Life in Letters and Other Writings, New York: Scribner (2013, revised edition).                

 

George W. Bush, 41: A Portrait of My Father, New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.

 

Timothy Naftali, George H.W. Bush, American Presidents Series, Times Books, 2007.

 

 

 

 

 

1. After our first seminar meeting, I distilled our discussion into five components for understanding a President: circumstances, character, choices, execution, and outcomes.  And I argued that these components are interdependent, making it challenging to understand causality: when we encounter a successful or failed President, the temptation is to point to simple explanations.  Our study of the Presidents this year suggests that success or failure is usually a more complicated story. [↩]