Shorter Megan McArdle: My extensive business experience, which is mainly as a secretary, and the fact that I thought about opening my own business, lets me judge that Barack Obama needs more business experience. And, I’m a blathering loon.
If you generally just pass by the McMegan links, as I do, this one’s worth a click just to understand how badly she’s decompensated since she’s moved to the Daily Beast. My guess is that Fallows got sick of ignoring and/or defending her at the Atlantic and quietly had Sully cut a deal with Tina Brown to take her in return for a future draft pick, but that’s just a guess.
(via)
Bostondreams
This obsession with ‘business experience’ is just becoming a fetish. There are very few US Presidents with ‘business experience’. Didn’t our last president have ‘business experience’? Worked out well.
dmsilev
As a general rule, I think it’s a decent idea that leaders have some idea of what is going on in the organization they lead. Thus, the head of a government probably should have some experience in government. Similarly, we might be better off if CEOs actually had some in-depth knowledge of the particular business that they’re running instead of just parachuting in from some other industry.
Crazy talk, I know.
PaulW
Dear Ms. McArdle: We had two Presidents who had extensive business experience before becoming President.
The first was Herbert Hoover.
The second was George W. Bush.
How many times do you Republican CEO-worshippers have to screw this country over with your fanboi obsessions with business leaders before you grok the obvious evidence that private-sector experience DOES NOT RELATE to public-sector?
Quincy
Not to go OT but if you want to discuss a truly awful right wing hack job, read Will today. He basically argues that Obama’s only winning because he’s black.
beltane
Why is this lazy, sloppy “thinker” entitled to a platform anywhere? It is just a form of charity at this point and I can think of no more unworthy a cause for charity than Ms McArdle.
A better job for someone with her particular skill set would be host of a cooking show on Comedy Central called “Miss Megan Learns to Separate an Egg”.
Mark S.
Dear fucking god, I thought she was verbose at the Atlantic. Since I can’t stand Megan’s writing, I skimmed after the first couple paragraphs. Why the hell does she start talking about McDonald’s advertising? Oh fuck it, I really don’t care.
JenJen
Holy crap. I never realized before reading this piece exactly how thin McMegan’s resume was, before she became a “business, finance and economics editor”. It’s also a little strange the way she describes her jobs as “secretary”, “admin”, and “administrative work”, isn’t it? That’s three different ways of saying the same thing.
Princess
I couldn’t make it past the first paragraph. Her two friends did this thing, so obviously it is a trend and going to tip the election. Groan.
arguingwithsignposts
See, here’s the rub, mistermix: If I click over and read, then the analytics will show another “reader,” which will boost her pageviews, and make her more attractive to Tina Brown, whose Newsweek/Daily Beast empire deserves to die for the simple act of hiring this lickspittle (among other numerous sins, cough Niall Ferguson cough).
So, no, I won’t be clicking over.
low-tech cyclist
I gave up on that McMegan piece about halfway through. If there’s an argument there, she certainly isn’t constructing one. She’s just blithering.
You can’t even really say she’s right or wrong, because she’s such a terrible writer that it’s too hard to figure out what she’s saying that she might be right or wrong about.
It’s easily the worst piece of writing that I’ve ever seen by someone who made their living by writing. I would be ashamed to write that poorly, and I make my living as a statistician, not as a wordsmith.
some guy
funny how McArgleBargle doesn’t mention any of her paid work for the Koch Brothers. go figure.
Ash Can
So she really has severed all her professional ties with the Atlantic? I was wondering for quite some time why they were putting up with the embarrassment. I wonder how big a black eye McArdle’s going to give the Daily Beast before Tina Brown draws the line.
ericblair
If this sort of nonsense manages to convince the goopers that they need to run even more Bidness Leaders, I hope it continues. Bidness has a totally different skillset than politics, and the Bidness Leaders’ endemic arrogance means that they won’t listen when someone tells them this. Then they’ll continue to get pounded into tiny little wet pink bits by Democratic pols who actually know what they’re doing.
Josie
@arguingwithsignposts: This.
ETA: It isn’t as if we can’t make an educated guess as to the content and quality of the article.
Mudge
@Bostondreams: I agree, it is now a fetish. As if finance was the Godhead. The government is not a business. Consider Romney’s 47% comment. It’s as if taxpayers are shareholders needing “skin in the game”. Taxpayers are not shareholders. Bondholders are shareholders.
Someday, somewhere, this false equivalency will be exposed, but sadly, not soon enough as we spiral into the “business is the only virtuous pastime” pit. This is all the more ironic since a business degree has always been what students got when they were incapable of surviving any other major.
beltane
@some guy: Her deeply entrenched dishonesty is the only thing that lets her keep drawing a paycheck.
amk
@Quincy:
I will take it. At least that means the voters are not bigots anymore. Well, at least the majority of them.
MikeJ
@arguingwithsignposts: Use the google cache.
You can read it and not give them a hit.
Snarki, child of Loki
A future draft pick for the Special Olympics, Conservative Blogger Event?
If there isn’t one, there should be.
Suffern ACE
@Quincy: I stopped caring about Will in 1988. It’s amazing how long of a career one can get away with with such a thin resume and some editor willing to hire you.
some guy
did anyone else read tyhe story in the Times today about how Senate “leaders” are prepping plans for the post-election Austerity Regime?
but if that plan doesn’t work they have a backup:
so come November our choices are clear, we can vote to cut Medicare and Social Security OR we can vote to cut Medicare and Social Security. It’s not MORE choice, America, it’s YOUR choice!
Steve
I don’t see why Megan’s insight from working as an administrative whatever is any deeper than Obama’s insight from working as an associate at a law firm. What’s that, you say, Megan basically disappeared Obama’s work experience and said he had nothing but summer jobs? Well okay then.
Comrade Javamanphil
@arguingwithsignposts: Plus you just know there are going to be too many notes.
Shawn in ShowMe
Could be five or five hundred hundred but that’s not the point. The point is if you knew that number you too would be shocked, shocked. It’s like when I found out that Brad dumped Jennifer. I couldn’t cook for a week.
Alex
What a weird article. It spends a lot of time talking about the unique perspective interacting with the normal people gave her. If only Obama could have gained that perspecive at some point in his career, perhaps by doing som fom of organizing in the community.
Schlemizel
@arguingwithsignposts:
THANK YOU!
I’m with you don’t give these batshit insane douchebags a click. Its the only power we have to stop them
Kirbster
Hey! Let’s play a game:
I’m going to run (this institution) like a (completely different institution).
I’m going to run this government like a business.
I’m going to run this bakery like a law firm.
I’m going to run this hospital like a sewage treatment plant.
I’m going to run this preschool like a warehouse club.
I’m going to run this hotel like an auto repair shop.
Mix & match! It’s innovative, bold, and endless fun!
MikeJ
Why didn’t Obama take the time and trouble to learn how to drive a truck shaped like a hot dog?
Mark S.
So, did anyone read the whole article?
Schlemizel
@Ash Can:
Ms. Brown drawing a line? I take it you are not familiar with the lady’s work.
Marc
@some guy:
Of course, “changes in Social Security” could mean raising the maximum cap for contributions. “Changes in Medicare” could mean reduced profit-skimming by insurance companies and hospitals.
I like the model of evaluating changes on their merits, not on adherence to arbitrary dogma. It’s as if some liberals decided that imitating the Tea Party on taxes was a good idea instead of a cautionary tale.
Mark S.
@Alex:
Well, it’s a good point. Mitt spent a lot of time interacting with normal people while he was at Bain. You can see it in his campaign.
amk
@some guy: pre-emptive poutrage?
Todd
I should have known better than to click. Ten thousand words of inane gibberish, and it increased her stats.
some guy
@Marc:
if you read through the Times article it appears the only one determined to save us is crazy Uncle Boehner, so yeah, the Tea Party Crazies determined to not raise taxes ever could be (again) the saviour of Medicare and Social Security.
PS: if you think the “changes” will include removing the caps on SS and decreasing the skimmers in Medicare then I have a bridge you might be interested in.
numfar
Not to defend McArdle, but using her time as a secretary to negatively define her business experience is unfair to secretaries.
It’s been my experience that secretaries have a great deal of knowledge regarding the inner workings of an organization and are very valuable.
Woodrowfan
So did Jimmy Carter. And at least Hoover and Carter were successful businessmen!
some guy
@amk:
Nope. this is exactly the plan Krugman warned about last week. The Austerity Party is America’s only true bipartisan formation.
Jacquelyn
I walked by a business once. Does that count as “experience”?
Linda Featheringill
@Quincy:
Obama leading because he’s black:
Of course that’s why. I mean you have a country where 78.1% of the population [census bureau] is black and naturally they’ll vote for their own kind, regardless of how much the white candidate has to offer.
No?
MikeJ
@Woodrowfan: Harry Truman also had experience running a small business. Of course it failed, but he probably learned more from it than Mitt did with his success.
malraux
@numfar:
What struck me about that was how she described those positions as permanent long term positions… that she left after a short amount of time. It really sounded to me like a large number of “you just aren’t working out with our company” sorts of job changes.
ericblair
@Kirbster:
Permission to steal this.
@some guy:
Maybe we should actually see what it is (if anything) before having an aneurysm. The caterwauling about Democrats killing Social Security Any Day Now sounds an awful lot like the caterwauling about Obama taking all yer gunz away Any Day Now, and I’d like to wait a bit before popping a rivet about it.
Steve
The really bothersome thing about Megan’s piece is the same thing that was offensive when Eric Cantor turned Labor Day into Bosses’ Day: you can worship the hard-working entrepreneurs who create jobs all you like, but maybe you should also give a thought to the working men and women who are willing to do all those shitty jobs. Who gets credit for making the coal mine work: the guy who founded the mining company, or the people who work in the mine night and day until their lungs give out?
Every night, someone comes in my office and empties the trash and replaces the trashcan liner. Is that person supposed to be grateful to me for making their job possible? Give me a break.
Cassidy
I really hope that McArglebargle is one of the one’s who secretly follows Balloon Juice and that she gets all emo and cranky at work after these posts. Heh…maybe she’s just trolling BJ.
Cassidy
@numfar: No it isn’t. Secretaries are the go to people to get things done in any organization. They know who is who, who’s important, who’s humored, etc. But, like the rest us, learning by osmosis is not an option. A secretary to a surgeon isn’t going to learn how to perform cardiothoracic surgery just through proximity.
Anya
@Steve: I linked to a New Yorker piece about how hedge fund billionaires hate Obama last night and one of those hedge fund guys described the president as “a forty-seven-year-old guy that never worked a day in his life,” when the author of the piece Chrystia Freeland, challenged the guy about his Obama “never worked a day in his life” comment, he basically said that what he meant by “working”, is that Obama “never made payroll. He’s never built anything”. So the righties whether they’re greedy billionaires or bullshit makers like McArdle are constantly moving the goal post when it comes to Obama’s work experience.
Michael
The typical path of a McMegan argument is:
McM: “The numbers prove this idea I like.” [the Bad Math stage.]
Critic: “No they don’t. You did the math wrong. Your idea isn’t proved.”
McM: “I was sick/my calculator was broken, but that’s not even what I was trying to prove anyway, what I was really trying to prove was this other thing.” [Shifting the Goal Posts.]
Critic: “Nope, that doesn’t work either.”
McM: “Oh yeah, well it was true for me/my parents/my grandparents/my friend, therefore it must be true in general!” [Argument by Anecdote.]
Critic: “Lord…nevermind, you’re too dumb to even understand what I’m saying.”
McM: “You’re being mean! I’m a victim! I win!” [The Victim=winner stage]
It seems like she’s jumped straight to the argument by anecdote stage. And we know why. The “data” for presidents with business experience is limited to Hoover and W. Bush and not broken calculator in the world can twist their records into anything that looks positive.
tomvox1
@Ash Can:
Neverday. See also Niall Ferguson.
mai naem
Hoover was not a bad person. He just happened to be the president during the worst financial crisis in the US. He accepted his presidential pension even though he didn’t need it, because Truman needed it and he didn’t want Truman to feel humiliated.
Tone In DC
@ericblair:
LULz.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@ericblair: some guy’s still fuming over the cuts in Medicare caused by the ACA.
tomvox1
@arguingwithsignposts:
Honest question, though: isn’t clicking through also good for BJ or is that not how it works?
(My understanding of modern advertising begins and ends with Hai Karate commercials, I’m afraid…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtwh3nQP5Uo )
some guy
@ericblair:
what part of Erskine-Bowles recommendations is unclear to you?
The way to “fix” Social Security is to remove the cap on earning taxed. The chances of that particular solution becoming legislation approaches zero. But I am sure Tom Udall and Michael Bennett have only the best of intentions. Go Team!
Cassidy
Ummm…do emo-progs ever have a happy day?
Ash Can
@Schlemizel:
@tomvox1:
She did manage to make the New Yorker a laughingstock, didn’t she? Fallows looks pretty darned smart for foisting both Sullivan and McArdle off on her.
SenyorDave
@Anya: Shorter answer – he’s blackity, blackity, blackity, and we know about THOSE PEOPLE’S work ethic.
In all seriousness, that guy I believe his name was Cooperman sounded like one of the most repulsive of the .0001%.
And the payrolls that Romney are most familiar with are the ones he’ll cut after he’s stripped his latest company of its assets and pushed it into debt.
some guy
Because it is working so well in England, Spain, and Greece we really need to lock in a deficit reduction plan here, too. Go Team!
some guy
On the other side of the aisle, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), has also said the Simpson-Bowles proposal is the logical starting point for the fiscal deals Congress will have to make after election day. Durbin, a member of the Simpson-Bowles commission, voted in favor of the proposal that would have slashed long-term spending and increased tax revenue.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-simpson-bowles-tax-increases-20120930,0,3270883.story
Face
I havent seen anything that long since I stepped out of the shower.
It’s like she’s confused words with chocolate.
RSA
Here’s my favorite line from the linked article:
Doesn’t that perfectly capture the essence of Washington punditry?
some guy
Maybe we should actually see what it is (if anything) before having an aneurysm.
We have always been at war with EastAsia.
Treasury Secretary Erskine Bowles will do what is best for America’s seniors.
Dork
Never ever ever ever ever going to happen. About the only real perk the middle class enjoys.
Hatmandu
@Ash Can: Next stop: The Piggly Wriggly Penny Saver.
Kadzimiel
All I have to say is that there is a reason why Megan McArdle is an anagram of:
Manacled Germ
and
Mangled Cream
Schlemizel
@mai naem:
Truman used Hoover to handle European rebuilding after WWII and had a lot of nice things to say about him. Truman also said Hoover was not to blame for the depression but that it was the people he brought with him. Thats damning with faint praise.
JPL
@Mark S.: No.
Villago Delenda Est
Someone already mentioned the glories of our CEO president.
Who came into the job with the glorious experience of causing three companies to fail.
Who needed his daddy’s influence to find positions on boards after he’d fucked up three businesses.
Which sounds a lot like McArglebarble’s CV of business acumen.
When you’ve got trust fund babies like the vile Koch Brothers backing you, there’s no actual FAIL possible. Consequential FAIL, like taxes and personal responsibility, is for the little people.
Damn, this bitch really, really, REALLY needs a fucking tumbrel ride.
Chyron HR
@some guy:
You forgot “The fact that social security hasn’t been cut yet is part of the plot to cut social security”.
PaulW
@Woodrowfan:
Jimmy Carter was also a submarine commander in the US Navy, and his business experience was being a self-owning farmer (much like Washington) before heading into politics. In comparison, Hoover’s success as a businessman meant DIDDLY SQUAT during the Great Depression, and George W. Bush’s only success as a businessman (out of how many business start-ups that went bust?) was being the minority owner of the Texas Rangers baseball team (and they still were lousy during his tenure).
Schlemizel
@Ash Can:
Yes but it was not through her ability to set limits – in fact I’d argue it was her inability to recognize where the limits should be that made the New Yorker the fiasco it was under her.
Interesting story. I had never heard of here before the New Yorker but Garrison Keillor replied to the note announcing her hiring with his resignation. Apparent he knew her well enough.
hueyplong
A couple of dozen “gaffes” (or “accidentally honest statements of his true thinking”) ago, during the GOP primaries, Romney said he thought complaints about income inequality reflected nothing but envy, and that such topics should only be discussed in “quiet rooms.”
It would be nice if the next incarnation of a “47% ad” used that quote as the intro to the now-familiar stuff about personal responsibility, etc., so people can close the circle on just what gets discussed in one of the “quiet rooms” in which Romney raises his money as the one percent continues to win its unending class warfare against its social, economic and moral inferiors, a/k/a “you people.”
daveNYC
@mai naem: Hoover was a nice guy, but a horrible president. Probably wouldn’t have been too bad at some other time period, but you hire these guys to be able to handle situations like the Great Depression, so he doesn’t get a pass on that.
He did do a good job with the famine relief in Europe, so that’s nice.
And McArglebargle is just a blithering idiot.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
I thought maybe she was responding to this.
1badbaba3
Mmmmmmm, more brainy republican chix. I needs a cold shower.
JasonF
Ronald Reagan never had to meet a payroll …
ericblair
@some guy:
Really? Where’s the actual report? The committee agreed on nothing, the report never happened, and you’re confused because Simpson and Bowles said something in front of a camera which was never approved by committee. It has the same legislative weight as Mr. Simpson’s grocery list. Feel free to freak out, though.
kindness
No I won’t give McMegan the link click. It’s too early. I don’t want to wipe out my blood pressure levels.
lacp
She’s perfect for Sullivan: she can peddle 1%-er economics while he peddles Bell Curve sociology. Win-win!
RareSanity
OK, I’m happy to read some of the responses here…
I thought it was just my ADD, that I stopped reading when I got the McDonald’s advertising paragraph, then I scrolled down for awhile, and my mind immediately stamped a “TL;DR” on the entire article.
It wasn’t my ADD, it was just a long-winded article about something…what I don’t know. But that’s not my fault, it’s the writer’s.
Chyron HR
@ericblair:
And, boy, what an amazing coincidence that with Obama stomping Romney in the polls and Democratic congressional prospects looking bright, we’re suddenly being told that OOGA BOOGA DEMS ARE COMING FOR YOUR OASDI. Go figure.
Liberty60
Piling on here-
Why is it that experience in government administration is not merely unimportant to running a government, but actually a detriment?
Imagine if I applied to be a CEO of a business, and my main asset was that “I was NOT a businessman!”
danimal
@Kirbster: I’m going to run this blog like an insane asylum!
Origuy
@JasonF:
Oh, come on, the Screen Actors Guide had to have a few employees. Although his staff certainly managed the day to day affairs of the (say it softly) union.
jayjaybear
@danimal: Talk about reinventing the wheel!
Larkspur
@numfar: Numfar, do the dance of discernment. Anyone who doesn’t understand how critically important a secretary is will eventually pay for that ignorance.
Meanwhile, I’m going to run the government like my dog-walking business: plenty of fresh air, rain or shine, and leave no shit behind.
trollhattan
It takes a bidnezman to discover “Governin’ iz hard” and then decide governin’ isn’t really worth the effort, so why not just delegate it? See Cheney, Dick for a delegation example.
sab
@Bostondreams:
Obama has been making payroll for at least six years, what with keeping the ground game from his 2008 campaign organization intact for 2012. Not all of his people are volunteers. That isn’t a profit-making enterprise, but it’s a big, expensive, complex organization that seems to run like clockwork. While he’s still doing his day job at the White House.
Chris T.
@Kirbster:
Your estimate for one night is $60.
The next morning, your bill is for $300. “Well, it turns out that we had to drain and flush some fluids … and now the bed needs new sheets, and with parts and labor…”
Sebastian Dangerfield
@Kadzimiel:
Highly appropriate. I have no doubt that many failed, curdled efforts at Hollandaise — combined of course with her confusion of acquisition with happiness — impelled her purchase of a $1,500 blender.
Amir Khalid
@tomvox1:
Fixed for completeness.
Ruckus
@Jacquelyn:
As long as walking by that biz taught you to walk on by rethuglicans then yes.
bemused senior
@Anya: Interesting that someone who runs a hedge fund thinks he built something.