The Power and the Money by Tevi Troy

Author:Tevi Troy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510781740
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2024-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Coda: Iacocca’s Post-Retirement Relationships with Presidents

In September of 1993, Democratic president Bill Clinton woke a retired Lee Iacocca at 2:00 a.m. in Italy to ask him to come to the White House. When Iacocca got back to Washington, D.C., on September 23, Clinton asked for Iacocca’s help to sell NAFTA—the North American Free Trade Agreement. Clinton saw Iacocca as a helpful foil to Ross Perot, another CEO-turned-political-actor who was regularly railing against the pending free trade deal. Iacocca joined Clinton at an October 1993 White House event promoting NAFTA, where Clinton praised the former auto executive for being “such an eloquent spokesperson for NAFTA.” NAFTA passed on December 8, 1993, and Iacocca later praised Clinton’s “passion for governing, his openness, and his respect for people from all countries and all walks of life.”67

Iacocca thought less of Clinton’s replacement, George W. Bush, though. While he supported Bush in 2000, in large part because of his relationship with Bush’s father, he disapproved of Bush’s administration. He backed Bush’s opponent John Kerry in 2004, and he published a book in 2007 that was harshly critical of Bush. Iacocca wrote that Bush “doesn’t have common sense” and characterized Bush’s team as “a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff.” In response, White House spokesman Alex Conant retorted the administration “does not do book reviews.”68

In 2008, Iacocca, by now in his eighties, liked both the Republican John McCain and the Democrat—and eventual winner—Barack Obama. He described Obama as “one of those stars who seem to come from nowhere to capture the imagination of the nation.” He was disappointed in Obama’s presidency and backed Mitt Romney—son of former auto executive George Romney—in 2012. Iacocca knew Joe Biden from Biden’s long career in the Senate and thought that there was “some great experience in that man—much of it in foreign affairs—if we’re willing to take advantage of it.” Iacocca did not live to see Biden’s presidency, dying on July 2, 2019, after typifying the increasing entanglement of CEOs and American presidents. While he initially pushed to get government off his company’s back, he spent his later years trying to get more government intervention on behalf of his business interests. Iacocca’s evolution from anti-regulation lobbyist in the Nixon days was reflective of the shift made by CEOs in the twenty-first century. While they once wanted government off their backs, many now increasingly wanted government on their sides.69

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