President George W. Bush is legally the U.S. commander-in-chief. But how does he rank as chief executive? Two collegiate experts in private and public service joined “Power Lunch” to examine how the first president with an MBA from Harvard Business School is holding up as America’s CEO.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Senior Associate Dean at the Yale School of Management, declared that in a business analogy, Bush is “a CEO who’s sweating bullets.” He told CNBC’s Sue Herera that reports from Davos reveal a “backlash on U.S. diplomacy” that is “hurting U.S. brands.”
Roger Porter, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, agreed with Sonnenfeld. He suggested that as Bush prepares to deliver the State of the Union address tonight, he will re-focus – “as all good CEOs do” – on other issues besides the ones most at the forefront of national consciousness, e.g., the divisive war in Iraq. Porter said that to succeed, the 43rd president must break “new ground” to find common cause with congressional Democrats.