A Review of Tevi Troy’s ‘The Power and the Money’

(Mohammad abu Ghosh/AP)

History buffs, especially political history buffs, will want to pick up Tevi Troy’s latest book, “The Power and the Money.” Highly readable, Troy’s book illustrates the often complicated, sometimes antagonistic, but increasingly inevitable relationships that develop among corporate titans and U.S. presidents.

Troy, a presidential historian and former senior White House official, does for presidential history what Stephen King did for horror: his books shock and entertain. Just don’t expect Troy to regale the reader with tales of a possessed 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine.

Politics alone are plenty scary.

“The Power and the Money” spans 150 years of U.S. history, 28 presidents, and 18 titans of industry. Weaving dozens of characters into a coherent story is a challenge, but Troy rises to the occasion.

According to Troy, the book is intended to help current and future CEOs “engage with an increasingly powerful and involved federal government.” He adds, “For the rest of us, this is a cautionary tale of what happens when the federal government gets too big and too enmeshed in the activities of the producers and innovators in our economy.”

Indeed, as the executive branch gained tax and regulatory authority, CEOs increasingly realized they needed a significant Washington, D.C., presence to protect their companies and to, whenever possible, secure themselves an advantage vis-à-vis their competitors.

Troy points out, “Making friends with presidents is good business. Whether it’s good for the American people is another matter entirely.”

CEOs sometimes don’t understand the importance of having “friends” in Washington, D.C., until it is too late.

In the late 19th century, for example, John Rockefeller largely ignored the federal government. Rockefeller’s political naiveté ultimately led to Standard Oil’s breakup in 1911.

A century later, Bill Gates made the same mistake. Although the government never disassembled Microsoft — not for a lack of trying — the company and its stock price suffered mightily at the hands of the Justice Department.

Corporate and government entanglement is a fact of life. There isn’t one aspect of a corporation’s business that isn’t impacted today by government. Understandably, to paraphrase Willie Sutton, CEOs gravitate to U.S. presidents because that’s where the power is.

Troy devotes considerable ink, for example, detailing Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman’s efforts to influence U.S. presidents. Unlike certain other titans addressed in the book, Wasserman was largely successful.

Similarly, U.S. presidents often cozy up to business elites because of the perceived benefit. Consider Bill Clinton’s remarks at Wasserman’s memorial ceremony: “Lew helped me become president, he helped me stay president, he helped me become a better president.”

As with Troy’s previous books, The Power and the Money contains a treasure trove of memorable quotes and remarkable details that make this not just a good book, but a great book. Among my favorites:• When asked about Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Frick — an industrialist — fretted, “We bought the son of a bi***, but he wouldn’t stay bought.”• “When [Jack] Welch read that Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos was looking to join NBC News, he faxed a copy of the article with a drawing of his middle finger on it to the network’s president, putting an end to that possibility.”Troy peppers his book with dozens of “CEO jokes.” These nuggets add flavor and provide insight into the book’s main characters. Again, my favorites include:• “A boy walks up to Mark Zuckerberg. The boy says: ‘My daddy said you were stealing our information.’ Mark Zuckerberg replies: ‘He isn’t your dad.’”• From Warren Buffett’s 2010 shareholder letter, “As one investor said in 2009: ‘This is worse than divorce. I’ve lost half my net worth — and I still have my wife.’”• Time Magazine’s Henry Luce teased, “Time was even-handed during election years: Half the time it praised the Republicans, and half the time it damned the Democrats.”Publishers will release more than 2 million books this year. If you read just one book and like political history, you can’t go wrong with “The Power and the Money.”Following a two-year stint in the White House as an Associate Director of the National Economic Council, James Carter served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and Deputy Undersecretary of Labor for President George W. Bush.