President Trump’s working with Elon Musk, a very wealthy business leader and CEO of a few major businesses he created, has been front and center in the news for a few months now. This is not the first time that one of our Presidents cast their fate with a major business leader. This is all laid out in Tevi Troy’s delightful new book, The Power and the Money.
Troy, a presidential historian, has written four previous books and decided this time to take a unique view of the Presidency. He looks at the past 27 Presidents beginning with U.S. Grant and the major business leaders with whom they have interacted. There are legendary names such as Ford, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. There are more modern names such as Jack Welch, Warren Buffet, and Lee Iacocca. There are the current leaders such as Musk, Gates, Cook, and Zuckerberg.
This is not dry material. It is filled with fascinating stories of interactions between Presidents and people who provided them unique advice regarding the economy at the time. My favorite story is about the indomitable Lyndon Johnson and Hollywood legend Lew Wasserman. LBJ began to rely on Wasserman for advice and wanted access to him at any time. There was no thought of a cell phone in the 1960’s. One day Wasserman received a call that someone from the White House Signal Corps was installing a phone in his bedroom. Wasserman told the man, “I don’t know who you are or what you are doing in my house, but I didn’t order a phone.” The man answered, “Well the President has ordered the phone in your room, would you like it at the head of your bed or the foot”? The powerful Wasserman continued to protest, but to no avail. The workman stated, “Well we’re going to install it so you may as well put it where you like it.” This is one of many stories reflecting interactions between the biggest names in business and our Presidents.
I asked Tevi why he wrote this book. He replied, “This is my fifth book on the presidency. With each book. I look at the issue of presidents and something that has never been covered before that speaks to our current moment in American society. In the early 2020s when I was looking into my next book topic, I noticed how important business leaders were becoming in Washington, but also how both political parties were becoming increasingly hostile to big business, so I thought the history of presidents interacting with big name CEOs would make a good topic for a book. As it turned out, my timing was perfect given all the big-name CEOs that were important in the 2024 election and in the Trump administration, especially Elon Musk, who I covered in the book.”
His favorite business leader in the book is John D. Rockefeller. Troy stated, “John D. Rockefeller was fascinating both in the way that he created a massive empire in a short time but also that he did it in a time when the federal government was initially not a factor in what he was doing. In this way, Rockefeller established a recurring model in the book of CEOs who built empires without taking government into account and then getting burned by their inattention to the power of the federal government.”
Troy contrasted the financial collapses of 1907 and 2007. In 1907, JP Morgan was personally responsible for saving the financial markets. There was a different story in 2007. Troy said, “Both were dangerous periods of potential economic collapse, but there were of course important differences. In 1907, it seemed in some way easier to bring the economy to the point of near collapse and for one person, JP Morgan, to help the president make it through. By 2007, the federal government and the economy were much more complex and much more tightly intertwined making it harder to get to the point of the near collapse, but also requiring many more players, including but not limited to JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon — and a lot more money — to solve the problem.”
I asked Tevi what he learned that was most interesting in writing this book. His answer: “It was a combination of how little government there was when Rockefeller was creating his empire and how much government there is now. Too little government back then was dangerous in its way, but too much government now is also dangerous in the way it threatens to be crippling to any company trying to start out and build something new and innovative.”
I have read biographies of 24 of the 27 Presidents and every business leader except four. I still found the book easy to read, informative and highly entertaining. So will you.
