Country needs more than a boastful businessman

The business boast is a troubling theme in this election’s Republican presidential primaries:

“I have run a business. A country is no different. So I can run a country.”

But it’s not that simple, and voters should beware of anyone basing his or her bid for the presidency on that premise.

A Dana Fradon cartoon from The New Yorker in 1992 pictured a wealthy executive on his city terrace looking up at the night sky telling the person beside him, “Do you know why the universe works so well? God runs it like a business, that’s why.” The humor is in the absurdity of the claim, but also in how all too plausible it is for someone successful in business to universalize the secret of success in that way.

Business is good. A country needs business, and governments benefit from the management skills and awareness of scarce resources that are part of doing business. But a country is not a business. It’s a civic community, a more diverse human enterprise with a more complex moral purpose. So governing it wisely and effectively requires diverse sources of wisdom.

What is distinctly missing in Donald Trump’s presidential bid is a circle of advisers, a proto-Cabinet. There are no sages in his advisory orbit. He seems confident that his own understanding is all the country needs. His advocacy of centralized government programs to address complicated human problems fits this profile. This is the opposite of the republican wisdom of our political system. Our Constitution distributes power between federal and state governments, with preference for the latter. It spreads federal power over three separate and equal branches and then further divides and shares power in a way that gathers perspectives, setting them not only in competition but also in conversation. It draws them toward compromise, what is more likely to be the common good than anyone’s limited understanding can provide.

As a college professor, I school my students in the great questions that underlie and shape our life together, and the individual good that it makes possible. Rich with wisdom though it is, what I give them is far from sufficient as an education, so my colleagues provide them with philosophy, economics, theology, history, literature, math, and science. There is wisdom in many counselors from several walks of life.

I serve at another college on the board of trustees. The most excellent president could not run that community of learning on his own. But if the board that governs with him were made up entirely of business executives, we would be a poor support without pastors, lawyers, academics, and managers to fill out our counsel.

Even in the home, the government of children for their formation into mature adults requires the wisdom particular to both a mother and a father, older generations of relatives, and a like-minded community. And even a business can’t be run well as a monarchy.

God describes His church as a body with many parts having different functions for the good of the whole (1 Corinthians 12). So it is good for any leader to show humility by drawing wisdom from the variety of people in whom God has placed it.