The Two Misters Wonderful

Mr. Wonderful #2:  Kevin O’Leary has dropped out of the Conservative Leadership race.  Not much of a surprise, really.  He has given a couple of reasons for dropping out, primarily his admission that his poor French would not let him win in Quebec.  Nonsense!  If he was a real politician, he would have found some strong Quebec lieutenants to carry his message into that province.  This is how other leaders from outside Quebec have handled that situation and gone on to win elections.  The most recent example is Mr. Harper, the predecessor as the Conservative Party leader.  So, if this is not the real reason, what could that reason be?

Mr. O’Leary entered the Conservative Party race when Trump mania was at its peak.  Trump had just been elected president, but had no yet been sworn in.  Expectations were high.  He was going to show the world what a great businessman could do to “Make America great again”.  There is no question that Mr. O’Leary was going to try to ride this coattail.  But in the last 100 days things have changed in the United States.  And Mr. O’Leary must have realized that running a country had absolutely nothing in common with running a business.  For one thing, you are not really the boss, at least not in a democracy.  You cannot run things as you see fit. And it is nothing like being on a reality TV show.  You have to be able to respect people, listen to them, take advice from them and deal with a Parliament/Congress and a Supreme Court.  So I think that Mr. O’Leary finally had to acknowledge that he was not capable of doing these things and found an excuse, “Je ne parle the good Francaise” to bail himself out.

Mr. Wonderful #1:  I said a lot about Mr. Trump in the first part of this discussion.  I think he, too, is finding out that you cannot run a country like a company.  You cannot just order people around and, when things go wrong, declare business bankruptcy and start over.  You cannot just sign executive orders and expect everyone to fall in line as if it was a memo “from the Office of the CEO”.   You cannot treat other countries as if they were a customer that you just have to make a deal with (to your advantage of course).  The biggest danger, if he does not learn these lessons, is in international relations.  He may eventually figure out how to get things done with Congress, which of course he will have to even to get a budget in place.  However, this will not be nearly so easy when dealing with other countries and international organizations.  He must first learn that every country is different with different problems and national interests.  He must also learn that it is not about “The Art of the Deal’.  Other countries can put forward some tough negotiators who are very adept at making deals and learning the “other guy’s” weaknesses.  If Mr. Trump, his trade advisors and the so-far gutted State Department don’t learn about these countries, they could be in for some very hard times.  So far, the only foreign policy activities we have seen is “show of force” posturing against what he sees as enemies and blustery rhetoric against so-called friends.  No much subtlety in those moves.  The international stage was where Mr. Trump most assailed his predecessor, but it is on that same stage that Mr. Trump could see his greatest failures.