From the final Morning Jolt of the week…
A Cuban Revolution We Could Do Without
Maureen Dowd spends time with billionaire Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks and host of the reality show “Shark Tank,” and finds there’s a “10 percent” chance he’ll run for president in 2020 as either a Republican or an independent.
“Look, there are people who are saying we don’t need another business person,” he says, sipping iced tea. “But it’s about what you do with it, what you learn, what you can contribute and what value you can add. I’d want to come in with proof of an agenda, ‘Here’s a health care solution and I’ve already paid my own money to have it scored.’
I have great news to share: The United States has fifty little mini-presidencies where someone can try out their executive leadership skills in government, that come with their own slightly smaller mansions, motorcades and security details. These jobs operate essentially the same way the presidency does, trying to build legislative coalitions to pass laws, issue executive orders, and nominate judges. They’re called governorships, and for a long time, Americans saw those positions as the best way to demonstrate that a person had potential to be a good president. But apparently paying attention to places like Baton Rouge, Austin and Madison is just too much to ask, and the country has decided to select its presidents from the major networks’ prime-time lineup.
Maybe Mark Cuban would make a great president; maybe he would make a terrible one. Yes, he’s outspoken and flamboyant and the bane of NBA referees, and yes, he’s made a lot of money. But at heart he’s making the same “I’m the master deal-maker” pitch that Trump did.
“They always say that people vote against what they didn’t like about the previous president, right? And I think he’s so ineffective, people will look for somebody who can get something done who’s not a politician. If that’s a celebrity, that’s just an easier platform to work from. The best example is tax reform, right?”
He says he would call the top 5,000 profitable companies and say: If I’m going to give you a 20 percent corporate tax rate, I’m going to need a commitment from you that you’re going to increase the wages of your lowest-paid workers.
“If you did that,” he says, “you’d be a hero.”
Okay… what if only half the companies are willing make that commitment? Or only 1,000? Do you not reduce the corporate tax rate? How big a wage increase counts as keeping their word? What if they make the promise and then break it? Is this some sort of binding legal contract? Would President Cuban send his Department of Justice after the companies if they didn’t keep their promise? What if there’s a recession? What if their industry makes a great breakthrough in automation in the interim? What if there’s new foreign competition? Can they lay off workers, but raise the wages of the remaining ones?
Grand bargains and fixing government always sound easy when they’re just conversation over ice teas with Maureen Dowd.
Why are so many people who are convinced they know how to fix the government so allergic to the idea of working anywhere in government except the very top? We need smart, reform-minded problem-solvers at every level from town council and board of education to the Oval Office.
I don’t want to hear anyone touting Cuban as “a more serious Trump.”
Asked if he would send the Mavericks’ former player Dennis Rodman to negotiate with Little Rocket Man, he replies, “Why not?”
(Notice Dowd refers to Kim Jong Un as ‘Little Rocket Man’ and everyone, from the Times editors to the readership, understands. For all his flaws, Trump knows how to put a nickname on someone and make it stick.)
As I mentioned earlier this week, if the election of Trump distresses you, your problem is not merely with Trump, but with the electorates that put him there – in both the GOP primary and the country as a whole. No matter how Trump’s presidency finishes, that electorate is still going to be there, unless there is a significant change in the way Americans see the responsibility of voting. (It’s not just Trump voters. Large chunks of the electorate also embraced a Socialist septuagenarian who promised free health care, free college education, free child care, and cradle-to-grave government care, all financed by taxing the rich, and of course, Hillary Clinton, a walking embodiment of secrecy, lies, arrogance and victimhood.) We need to recognize that our leaders are not there to entertain us. It’s entirely possible that the most successful and popular governors are the ones that are the most boring.
A Mark Cuban presidential campaign would effectively insist that America needs a president who has never worked in government before, but not the current president who has never worked in government before. Let me throw out a crazy idea: what if governing is a skill that requires practice, and that one gets better at with experience? What if a president is more successful if he knows and understands the complicated apparatus of the federal government better, and doesn’t have to rely on staff for the little details like, “no new gas pipeline plans can be approved anywhere in the country if the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has less than three members”?
The Dallas Mavericks don’t let you take the court if you’ve never played the sport before. Why should Americans give untested rookies the keys to the Oval Office?