Presidents Are NOT CEOs – John Paul Rollert | The Atlantic

Presidents Are NOT CEOs

On the meaning and implications of the country’s first true businessman president

John Paul Rollert  |  The Atlantic

Donald Trump

Among the more arid and promiscuous expressions in the English language is saying that someone is “in business.” The pawnbroker, the accounts executive at CBS, and the risk arbitrageur are all nominally engaged “in business,” but that fact probably does more to obscure the differences in their daily affairs than to reveal any fundamental similarities.

Donald J. Trump has certainly been “in business” for the better part of 50 years. And while his electoral success has made him a global face for American capitalism, the fact that he’s the first businessman to vault from the C-Suite straight to the presidency says little about what the country might expect from the next four years — or at least not nearly as much as many tend to think.