What makes the Obama administration different from its predecessors. Why is it pursuing policies far outside the political mainstream on healthcare, carbon emissions, taxes, stimulus spending, etc.? Are there ideological differences? Yes, but can we identify measurable ways in which Obama’s advisors differ from the advisors of previous presidents?
Michael Cembalest, chief investment officer for JPMorgan Private Bank has done just that. He has found an interesting difference between the Obama administration and its predecessors from 1900 – 2009. He looked at every president’s cabinet starting with Teddy Roosevelt and ending with Barack Obama. Cembalest looked at the “prior private-sector experience of all 432 cabinet members, focusing on those positions one would expect to participate in this discussion [on the economy].”
The underlying assumption, of course, is that prior experience in the private sector of the economy would give cabinet members a better understanding of how the private sector works. It is also reasonable to assume that people with private sector experience are more likely to formulate policies that will help the private economy and, therefore, are ultimately more successful at leading the economy out of a recession.
Here are Cembalest’s startling findings:
Note that from Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman, Democrat presidents (Wilson, FDR, Truman) tended to have cabinets with more private sector experience than Republicans (T. Roosevelt, Taft, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover) although the difference is generally small.
Starting with the Eisenhower, however, there is a much larger difference between the parties and, this time Republicans have more private economy experience than Democrats. The Republican presidents (with the single exception of Ford who basically ties LBJ) have more private economy experience in their cabinets than Democrats. The difference has also grown from about 15 percent (T. Roosevelt vs. Wilson) to over 25% in the opposite direction (Kennedy vs. Reagan).
Now we get to Barack Obama. Less than 10 percent of his cabinet has prior private sector experience. Only one president before him (Kennedy) had less than 30 percent of his cabinet with private sector experience. Even Jimmy Carter managed to stay above 30 percent.
Members of the Obama administration have less experience in the private sector than members of any administration in over 100 years.
Here is another look at the Obama administration. The comparison here is with Ronald Reagan in 1982. The emphasis is on substantive, relevant experience:
In 1982, Ronald Reagan was President (two consecutive terms as Governor of California), Don Regan was Treasury Secretary (35 years of financial sector experience), Martin Feldstein as the Chief Economic Advisor to President Reagan (the dean of business cycle determination), and Paul Volcker was Fed Chairman (9 years of prior financial sector experience). Compare and contrast to Barrack Obama (junior senator from Illinois for 3 years); Timothy Geithner (21 years experience in government, three years as a lobbyist); Larry Summers (no private sector experience; 27 years of academia and government) and Ben Bernanke (no private sector experience; 30 years of academia and government).
With differences like this, is it any wonder that the Obama administration pursues radical leftist policies widely supported in academia and causing unprecedented growth of government power instead of getting the basics right and launching our economy on a firm road to recovery?
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This is a great piece of research. with regard to the apparently lower private sector experience of Republicans compared to Democrats in the years before Eisenhower, it should be noted that to some extent this was because some of the Republicans came from a background of privilege and wealth, and had no need of work but rather chose to dedicate themselves to public service… if the sample was normalized for that factor, I suspect the anomaly would be eliminated
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