We were seeking “cosmic unity.” One of the times when I took LSD I had just become one with the entire universe when the landlord knocked on the door of my off-campus apartment. The rent on the entire universe was two month overdue.
And we were looking for personal insights. For all I know I had some. But I don’t believe they were any more profound than the lyrics in the previously cited Beatles song “I Am the Walrus.” Which, many years of drug-free adult experience indicates, I am not. (Although I am tending more toward the 4,400-pound weight of a mature male Odobenus rosmarus than I was when I was nineteen, plus whiskers and, thanks to a partial plate and orthopedic shoes, tusks and flippers.)
Anyway, when it comes to self-analysis, drugs are a one-man birthday party. You don’t get any presents you didn’t bring.
Goo goo g’joob
But the sixties drug culture did produce some great music. Unless you’ve made the mistake of going back and listening to it. What did the Grateful Dead fan say when he ran out of pot? What a shitty band!
Turning on, tuning in, and dropping out unleashed a great wave of personal creativity—macramé plant hangers, posters for rock concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium with psychedelic lettering that was illegible unless you were too stoned to read, the cover art for the White Album, and hippie chick embroidery on jean jackets. These are comparable to the sculpture of Donatello, the illuminated manuscript of the Book of Kells, the painting of Caravaggio, and the couture of Coco Chanel. If you’re on PCP.
So what can the twenty-first century learn from the drug culture of the 1960s? Again, I refer the reader to my second paragraph. While doing some background reading, however, I did come across one helpful hint, which might be especially useful to America’s political class. In 2015 Cambridge University Press published a volume in its Cambridge Essential Histories series called American Hippies, by W. J. Rorabaugh, who quotes the Yale law professor and counterculture advocate Charles Reich, author of the 1970 bestselling panegyric to the 1960s, The Greening of America.
Says Reich, “No one can take himself seriously in bell-bottoms.”
Can the Government Be Run Like a Business?
“Government should be run like a business” is a bromide of long standing among fiscal conservatives, market-oriented libertarians, pragmatic liberals, and other people who think that politics and practicality ought to be a better match.
It should be noted that just because something is called a “bromide” doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. Potassium bromide is an effective sedative and anticonvulsant. It’s no longer prescribed as a medicine, however, because of its high level of toxicity.
But that’s much more than we know about the bromide of running government like a business, which has never been submitted to a meaningful trial.
We did elect a businessman to the presidency in 2016. But there’s considerable evidence that he’s not good at running businesses. Trump Taj Mahal, Trump Plaza Hotel, and Trump Entertainment Resorts all went bankrupt. He is good at branding. But branding a business is different from running one. Besides, “America” was already well established as a brand.
Very few American presidents have had significant business careers before they became president. I’m not counting the management of large plantations by early presidents such as Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and Jackson. We have a name for the slave labor business model. It’s called evil.
And I’m not counting show business either. It’s such an oddball enterprise that I’m not sure what lessons are to be learned from it. Okay maybe The Apprentice serves as an inspiration for Trump’s cabinet meetings the way Bedtime for Bonzo served as an inspiration for Reagan’s.
The few presidents we’ve had who were chief executives before they were the chief executive either didn’t try or didn’t get a chance to apply business methods to government matters.
An exception was Warren Harding, editor and publisher of a lucrative Ohio newspaper. Unfortunately Harding’s business method was corruption.
Both presidents Bush did have pre-presidential business careers. Bush 41 had done reasonably well in oil exploration, but not so well that he ever earned the West Texas nickname “Gusher George.”
As co-owner of the Texas Rangers, George W. Bush made over $14 million when the team was sold in 1998. But in 2010 the team was bought by Ray Davis and Bob Simpson for $593 million. Businesswise, Bush 43 seems to have left money on the table.
As president, however, each George faced challenges no CEO ever confronts. There isn’t any MBA case study that prepares you for the Gulf War or 9/11.
And speaking of CEOs, it’s interesting what happened when Donald Rumsfeld (ex-CEO of G. D. Searle pharmaceutical corporation) was handed the management of the Iraq War. The merger and acquisition went well but in the end the stockholders (U.S. occupying troops, Iraqi civilians, victims of ISIS terrorism) weren’t gratified.
In fact, it’s been ninety-two years since we elected a president who was a truly successful businessman. The brilliantly entrepreneurial Herbert Hoover was a mining engineer who became a multimillionaire silver, lead, and zinc magnate. (No wonder Hoover favored “hard money.” Although, personally, I’m not sure I want a zinc-backed U.S. dollar.)
Alas, things did not work out well for “The Herbert”— 1929 stock market crash, Great Depression, etc.
To be fair, Hoover had been in office for less than eight months when economic disaster struck. It wasn’t all his fault. Nonetheless, “Great Depression” is the feeling that comes over anybody who tries to look at the U.S. government as a business.
In the first place, the USG “corporation” is a monopoly. Do not try to start your own government. We settled the question of whether that’s a good idea at Appomattox Court House in 1865.
And we settled it rightly. The former Yugoslavia gives us an example of what happens when a country—even a minor country—splits into lots of little countries.
When it comes to government one is enough. But that still leaves us with a monopoly situation.
Monopolies are infamous for charging high prices
