The Power and the Money

"The Power and the Money

By Tevi Troy

It is the defining trait of Washington's progressive politicos that they refuse to understand the symbiotic relationship between governmental power and the dominance of the country's largest corporations. Every new rule and regulation government imposes on companies is a lever by which the market's wealthiest and most well-connected players can strengthen their position and thwart their competitors.

Bernie Sanders rails at "millioneahs and billioneahs" and Elizabeth Warren denounces Wall Street fat cats, but neither stops to wonder if the regulatory regime they've helped create enables the corporate gigantism they loathe.

Tevi Troy's "The Power and the Money" (Regnery, 368 pages, $32.99), a chronicle of the alternately cozy and prickly relationships between eminent industrialists and American presidents, reifies this basic principle on nearly every page.

Mr. Troy's book was written before Elon Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, shocked everybody by avidly and unequivocally backing Donald Trump's re-election effort. Since November, Mr. Musk's association with the president-elect has strengthened, so much so that high-minded media commentators now purport to find impropriety in the alliance. These same commentators never saw anything amiss in the chummy relations between Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, and Barack Obama, even when many of them credited the Obama campaign's use of Facebook for his 2012 re-election win.

To give the high-minded their due, Mr. Musk's recent embrace of Mr. Trump is, for the moment anyway, more fervent and unreserved than anything we've seen since the Warner brothers Harry and Jack produced New Deal propaganda films for Franklin Roosevelt. Still, as Mr. Troy's book reminds us, since the latter part of the 19th century, when government assumed its role as the economy's superintendent, tycoons and presidents have always tried to use one another for their own ends.

Often those relationships have benefited both parties, but not always. In 1915, Henry Ford tried to persuade Woodrow Wilson to stay out of the war raging in Europe. Ford in essence threatened the president: He had chartered a ship to cross the Atlantic and offered its use to Wilson if the president would send delegates to Europe's capitals to negotiate for peace. If not, Ford would tell the press he made the offer and the president turned him down. Wilson had the automobile magnate escorted out of the White House.

Wilson was a savvy politician, though, and knew that Ford was too popular to alienate. He cultivated the alliance, partly by promising to keep America out of the war. Ford reciprocated by dropping $58,500 (about $1.6 million today) for a pro-Wilson ad that ran in 500 newspapers. Wilson was re-elected -- barely.

As for his promise to stay out of the war, he promptly broke it in his second term.

Mr. Troy, who served as the deputy secretary of health and human services under George W. Bush and whose previous histories of the presidency are, like this one, crisp and engaging, describes various other approaches taken by industry leaders to making friends in the Oval Office. John D. Rockefeller had no gift for it, and indeed saw his empire broken up because he could not mollify Teddy Roosevelt. Lew Wasserman, the Hollywood mogul, was a generous Democratic donor but managed to foster friendships with presidents of both parties. Occasionally he gained advantages, as when he promoted Richard Nixon's tax proposal, which, Mr. Troy observes, reinstated "an investment tax credit for the full cost of making films, including cameras, projectors, and the film itself."

The danger in these relationships, for the president, is that he risks denunciation should he spurn the industry titan or celebrity CEO. George W. Bush probably could have worked harder to stroke the ego of Lee Iacocca, the former Ford and Chrysler head who, in his book "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" (2007), claimed that Mr. Bush lacked common sense and called his administration "a gang of clueless bozos."

Things are far trickier for the industry bigwig dabbling in presidential politics. For years, apart from a 1988 appearance on her talk show by a tycoon with vague presidential aspirations (his name was Donald Trump), Oprah Winfrey stayed clear of national politics. Then, in 2008 she fell headlong for Mr. Obama. No problem -- her brand could survive the loss of fans who despised him. But in the years since, she has been expected to endorse and support Democratic candidates, which she has done faithfully. That didn't work out so well in 2016 and turned out disastrously in 2024. Ms. Winfrey is no longer the universally revered figure she was before 2008.

Similarly, Henry Luce, Time magazine's co-founder and dominant personality, at first didn't want to take sides in presidential politics. But his hatred of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal was too great, and Time started taking shots. So vexed was FDR by the magazine's criticisms that he imposed a ban on editors and publishers traveling to Europe during the war, a move specifically designed to punish Luce. The ban stayed in effect until the president's death in 1945.

Mr. Troy's narrative makes one principle increasingly salient: As the federal government's economic meddling enables the concentration of wealth and market share, Washington makes more demands and becomes harder to ignore. When a young Mr. Zuckerberg first met his idol Bill Gates, we are told, the latter advised the young tech entrepreneur: "Get an office there, now."" [1]

1. REVIEW --- Books -- Politics: These Friends in High Places. Swaim, Barton.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Jan 2025: C9.