If the United States were a company, would George Bush be our CEO?

The first MBA president probably wouldn't keep his job if he had to face a board of directors. But short of impeachment, what can be done to rein him in?

By Warren Hellman

Read more: Impeachment, President Bush, Bush, Opinion

Feb. 22, 2007 | The president of the United States is the chief executive officer of the most powerful economic machine in the world, yet his performance is rarely evaluated from that perspective. In fact, President Bush is the first president to have earned a master's of business administration and run a company; in 2002 Time magazine called him "the CEO president," noting his Harvard MBA and business experience.

But if the United States were a company, it would be a troubled one. A disastrous war in Iraq; another war nearly won, now at risk in Afghanistan; massive budget deficits -- USA Inc. is beset by many crises. As the chairman of a private investment firm, I have assisted many boards of directors in determining whether the CEO of a struggling company should remain in that job. As a citizen and stakeholder in this great country, I found myself thinking: How would a board of directors evaluate President Bush?

My thought exercise has its limits, since the nation doesn't technically have a board of directors -- American voters are best compared to stockholders. But in many ways the next best thing is the Congress, which has a crucial role in vetting, authorizing or blocking most of the president's proposals, from his budget to his Supreme Court picks to his decision to go to war. Now that we have a new congressional majority, it seemed an interesting time to wonder: Would we continue to employ George W. Bush if he were a CEO? If not, is there a way to remove him? And if that's not a viable option, how should Congress act for the 23 months until he leaves office?

When advising a board on how to evaluate a CEO, I tell them to review his or her performance in the following areas: implementing the company's fiscal and monetary policies, developing and successfully executing strategic plans, seeing that well-qualified personnel and managers are appointed, ensuring stability and long-range success, and respecting and protecting the charter and bylaws of the institution. How is President Bush doing on each of those counts?

Fiscal Responsibility
George W. Bush took over as CEO of USA Inc. when the country was running substantial surpluses, rapidly paying off its debt, and moving toward a future with a balanced budget. Forecasts predicted the country would continue to grow and be debt free in the near future. Bush took charge, and the opposite occurred: the country is running record deficits; debt service is skyrocketing. Bush's most recent economic forecast (arguably optimistic) predicts a balanced budget by 2012 (contingent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan not costing the United States a dime after 2009), which is, ironically, when he will no longer be in office. The trade deficit with USA Inc.'s No. 1 competitor, China, is increasing. Interestingly, a characteristic of many failing CEOs when losses are mounting is to hide or obfuscate the real deficits. This president, in addition to incurring massive deficits, has managed to hide the magnitude of the losses by special (otherwise known as "off balance sheet") allocations of billions of dollars that do not appear in the annual budget.

Strategic Decisions
The most important strategic decision made by CEO Bush was to minimize the importance of stabilizing Afghanistan, while at the same time choosing to invade Iraq. Those choices turned out to be a perfect example of the adage "fire, aim, ready!" and have led USA Inc. into unmitigated disaster. Not only were those decisions based on faulty intelligence, but Bush also had no business plan for his new endeavor, failing to take into account what the war would cost in lives and treasure, or what it would cost this country in its diplomatic relationships with the rest of the world. He cherry-picked intelligence, like a CEO cooking the books in order to get board support for his agenda. In other words, he was ready to reject any evidence that did not support the decision to invade.

Next page: This CEO has allowed his ideology to subvert the charter and bylaws this country was built on, namely the Constitution