In a constitutional republic, the chief executive of a big company gets the same single vote that every other individual does.
“American CEOs, forced into politics by cultural trends and staff demands in recent years, are hitting a new phase — actual lawmakers and rule-shapers,” Axios CEO Jim VandeHei wrote Saturday. Earlier this year at Axios, Felix Salmon wrote about “How CEOs became the 4th branch of government,” declaring, “CEOs must be considered a permanent political force, wielding awesome power. This week’s actions won’t be the last.”
There are a couple of problems with this generous analysis. First, the door seems to only swing one way.
When was the last time you saw American CEOs organize a public-pressure campaign to punish a state for moving its law in a more progressive direction? We’ve seen big institutions push back or punish state governments for Indiana on religious freedom, North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” South Dakota on transgender sports, and now Georgia on its election-reform bill; a similar effort is in the works opposing a GOP-backed election- reform bill in Texas. If CEOs are becoming “a permanent political force, wielding awesome power,” they are a permanent culturally progressive political force, wielding awesome power for the Left. Sure, large corporations generally oppose higher taxes — although they’re often better situated to take the hit than their smaller competitors — but we rarely see coalitions of businesses boasting of how they use their “voice, brand, and reach” to fight tax hikes and complicated red tape, or the constitutionally protected right to bear arms, or any of the priorities of Americans on the right side of the political spectrum.
Second, no one elected these CEOs to any public or government office. You can love or hate the laws listed above. But they were legally enacted through the procedures laid out under their respective state constitutions. Freely and fairly elected state legislators passed the legislation, and freely and fairly elected governors signed it into law. All of those public officials can be held accountable by voters in those states the following election. If there’s a compelling argument that those laws violate the U.S. Constitution, they can be struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. Governments are accountable to the whole public in a way that corporations are not. The electorate as a whole doesn’t get much say in whether Mary Barra stays at GM or Chip Burgh stays at Levi Strauss.
And it’s not like the American political world lacks opportunities for corporate executives to support particular candidates and causes – direct donations, political action committees, Super PACs, trade associations, and so on.
But American CEOs are never supposed to “hit the phase” of becoming “actual lawmakers and rule-shapers” or “become the fourth branch of government.” If you want to be a lawmaker in a state or in the country, earn that state power by running for office and winning the vote from your fellow citizens. Don’t exercise an off-the-books veto with behind-the-scenes pressure campaigns and threats.
Unlike elected legislators and state executive branch officials, corporate executives are not accountable to the state or country through regular elections. They’re accountable to their shareholders and boards of directors, but in many of the most high-profile cases, they’ve become de facto rulers of their companies. Jamie Dimon is not going to leave JP Morgan Chase until the day he feels like he’s done. Tim Cook is not involuntarily leaving Apple unless he runs the company into a cataclysmic disaster.
That’s a fine system for running Apple or any other big corporation. But in a constitutional republic, the chief executive of a big company gets the same single vote that every other individual does. The vast majority of CEOs who signed the Civic Alliance statement against the Georgia elections law do not live in Georgia or work in Georgia, and their companies’ presence in Georgia varies greatly. Why should Georgia state legislators prioritize the views of the chief executives of Tofurky, Patagonia, Lyft, and Etsy over voters in their district?