Tevi Troy joins Brian Anderson to discuss his book, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. 

Brian Anderson: Welcome back to the 10 Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Joining me on today’s show is Tevi Troy. Tevi is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute. He’s a senior scholar at Yeshiva University Strauss Center and a former Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services and Senior White House Aide. He’s a regular city journal writer as well, and he is the author of five books on the presidency. These include Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, and Shall We Wake the President?: Two Centuries of Disaster Management from the Oval Office. His newest book, which we’ll talk a bit about today, which was published several months ago. It’s called The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry, which is a great title. Tevi, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast. Again,

Tevi Troy: Thanks for having me, and thanks for doing 10 Blocks. It really is a terrific podcast, and I know you have rotating hosts and they always ask good and probing questions, and you have great guests, so thank you.

Brian Anderson: Well, that’s great, Tevi. So let’s talk about this, which is your fifth book, I believe, on the presidency. You’ve written for City Journal and presidential themes, including last summer when there was obviously a lot to write about. I wonder to start, how do you go about choosing your historical subjects and how did you get an idea to do a book on presidents and money?

Tevi Troy: Yeah, Brian, thanks for the question. And I‘ve got to say it’s not easy because what I try and do, and I’ve done this five times as you said, is write about something that nobody has covered before regarding the presidency and also something that speaks to our current moment. And as you know Brian, there have been books about presidents and food, presidents and sex, presidents and sports, presidents and pop culture, presidents and almost every subject you can imagine. So trying to find new ground, but also new ground that speaks to America and where America is at this moment is difficult. But with this book, I think I really did nail it because nobody had covered CEOs before, and CEOs were becoming increasingly more important, not just on the business pages, but the political pages. And at the same time both Democrats and Republicans seemed to have this increased antipathy towards CEOs and towards corporate America. And I thought that was a new development that was worth exploring

Brian Anderson: The Power and the Money, it charts this kind of uneasy dance. I guess you could describe it between presidents and CEOs going back to Grant and running up until Biden, what patterns when you looked at this history emerged and how presidents have managed, or you could say exploited or been constrained by these relationships with the titans of industry?

Tevi Troy: It’s a great question, Brian, because there really have been some interesting patterns that emerged, and I will cite three. Number one is that presidents have long wanted money and favors from corporate titans, but are wary of the political implications. I’ll give one example from the book back in 1880, James A. Garfield is curious about this guy called John D. Rockafella, he doesn’t even know how to spell the name. And he asks one of his political advisors if they should get money from him and the advisor, a wise guy named Amos Townsend says, “the name Rockefeller will cut like a knife in Pennsylvania” and warns him to steer clear. So that’s one is the wariness that they have to have towards these corporate titans, even as they want benefits in them. The second is the rise of the regulatory state to counter corporate power. And as I say in my first chapter, I call it the blank slate, there’s very little government tools to address what people see as the exploitative power and exploitive nature of the big business sector.

But over time, those tools have expanded and expanded and expanded to the point where it’s very unwieldy regulatory system as you well know. And what we have is a system now where government regulations don’t prevent corporations from making money. They make a great deal of it, but they do direct what corporations do towards government ends. And the third thing, the third recurrent pattern I’ve seen is on the CEO side, you have CEOs who continually think that they can ignore Washington because they’re bigger and better than Washington. Washington can’t touch them. This happened to John D. Rockefeller, this happened to Bill Gates, and they keep getting burned by Washington coming after them because the corporate sector may be more nimble, but government is a lot bigger.

Brian Anderson: So yeah, I guess I understand why CEOs would want to curry favor from presidential administration, how it can protect the business, it can allow access to sources of profit. But say a little bit more about what the president gains. Certainly there are risks, as you’ve just noted in forging too close ties with business leaders. But when you say they require money, do you mean in the narrow sense of just campaign funding support for particular causes? What drives the presidential agenda in establishing these connections?

Tevi Troy: Well, of course, money is important, and Mark Hanna, whom I talk about in the book, was a Republican political operative and senator around the turn of the 19th century to the 20th century. And he said there are three things important in politics. The first is money, and I forgot the other two. So yes, politicians want and have been getting money from corporate leaders for a very long time, but then corporations can also spend money not just for campaigns, but to support pet causes of presidents. In addition, corporate leaders have been sources of personnel sometimes of expertise. Think of the ‘08 and ‘12 Obama campaigns, which used Facebook’s expertise on social media to run a very effective social media campaign. So there’s those kind of tangible things, but then there’s also the intangibles, how presidents have often liked having these corporate leaders come to the White House to validate what they’re doing to show that they’re doing a good job on the economy and the celebrity of the CEO can provide a reflected glory on the president as well. If there’s a popular CEO, then the president can benefit from having that person around

Brian Anderson: Again, looking back at this history, which president in your view, handled the relationships with industry leaders most effectively and who were the worst at it?

Tevi Troy: It’s too soon to fully answer that question because Donald Trump has a lot of relationships with CEOs, and he could be the best or he could be the worst. We don’t yet know, but I always like to look to one of my political heroes, Ronald Reagan, who did have CEOs around. He liked hanging out with them, but he wouldn’t let them dictate terms of the debate. So for example, Lee Iacocca would come to the White House and Lee Iacocca because of the structural problems of the US auto sector, would often want government handouts, government largess, government rules that benefit his industry. And Reagan was somewhat unyielding in those if they violated Reagan’s free market principles. For example, at one point, Iacocca was pressing Reagan for a gas tax, and Reagan explained to him why that would be a politically unwise move, and then pointedly told Iacocca, well, Lee, that’s why you’re on that side of this desk and I’m on this side.

Brian Anderson: Interesting. How about somebody who didn’t handle it well though?

Tevi Troy: Well, there have been a couple of presidents who tried to stop J.P. Morgan from coming up with creative plans to save the US economy at a time when it was teetering. So you think of Teddy Roosevelt in 1907 and Grover Cleveland in 1895 or so, and both times they were somewhat fearful of J.P. Morgan’s unpopularity, but at the same time, the economy really needed the help. And Morgan came up with somewhat elegant plans for salvaging the economy, so I think those would be on the negative side.

Brian Anderson: What about FDR? He’s famous for calling out the malefactors of great wealth, for welcoming hatred of the wealthy. What was his relationship with business elites against the backdrop of this broader history?

Tevi Troy: Yeah, it’s a great point. And you mentioned hatred. At one time. FDR said, “they hate me and I welcome their hatred,” but it was also mutual because for some people like Henry Luce who was the founder of Time Magazine who hated Roosevelt so much that even after Roosevelt died, he said, “it is my duty to go on hating him.” A lot of hate relationships in The Power and The Money. But Roosevelt, I would say there were two phases to Roosevelt. There was phase New Deal, and then there was phase World War II, and he was much more friendly to corporate leaders in the need to win World War II phase. And that manifested in a number of ways. First of all, the industrialization of the U.S. economy to develop war material is something that takes place in that period. And Will Newton from the auto industry does come and manages that from Washington. Then also you have Henry Ford who hates Roosevelt, and Roosevelt doesn’t like him much either, and Ford builds the largest armaments plant in America at Willow Run, and Roosevelt even goes out to visit him there. And then the third, you have Henry Luce, who, as I said, really hated Roosevelt even he softens a little bit towards Roosevelt during the World War II years, and obviously after Pearl Harbor, he also softens his criticisms of Roosevelt. So I think Roosevelt did have these two interesting phases, but definitely not a big fan of the corporations overall.

Brian Anderson: Yeah, you mentioned Trump a bit ago and can’t avoid that subject. Certainly the most relevant at the moment and the most controversial relationship probably President Trump has at the moment is with Elon Musk, who’s been put at the helm of DOGE in broad capacity, although he’s going to reduce his activity with DOGE and get back to running his company soon apparently. Have there been any precedents for the Trump-Musk relationship?

Tevi Troy: Oh yeah, absolutely. There are a bunch of them. I did mention Henry Luce earlier. He was very close to Eisenhower and provided staff for Eisenhower, and he used his platform Time Magazine to advance Eisenhower’s interests. And he also got some backlash against him for being so close to Eisenhower. People used to denigrate Time Magazine. They would say, “Time is even handed. Half the time it praises the Republicans and the other habit bashes the Democrats.” So it’s not necessarily a new thing to have a corporate leader close to a president. He also had a, Ross Perot was very close to Richard Nixon and brought staff to help him computerize his campaign back in 68. And he helped Nixon with a bunch of different schemes. Some worked, some didn’t. One was the scheme to buy ABC and the Washington Post to get better coverage. That one didn’t work. But also Perot helped him highlight the idea and the issue of American POWs held in Vietnam. So you have had these close relationships between corporate leaders and presidents before.

Brian Anderson: How do you, now that we’re into the second Trump term, see Trump’s relationship with the business world? He can be quite adversarial sometimes, but on the other hand, he has major corporate friends and donors.

Tevi Troy: It is not just that he has major friends and donors, which he does, but it seems like those are the people he respects the most. People who were CEOs of big companies, people who have amassed great wealth, but also run big institutions. And so those are the people he looks to. He wants their praise, and I think in the first term, he got a lot of criticism from them, and that was frustrating to him. And in the second term, I think there’s been a more accommodationist approach for two reasons. One is the first term, Trump was seen as a bit of a fluke. They thought he wouldn’t get by very much, and there would be people who could control him because obviously second term Trump, it’s all Trump, and he’s got four full years and he’s got Republican House and Senates. They have to be more accommodationists in some sense.

But on the other side, you’ve got the Biden administration, and they were very hostile to a lot of corporations, especially the high tech corporations. Biden even said, I don’t like Zuckerberg. Biden pointedly did not invite Musk to a car summit, an electric car summit at the White House, which was just an unnecessary stick in the eye. And this was before Musk ever endorsed Trump. It was before Musk bought Twitter/X. I think the way the Biden administration dealt with corporations, I think pushed some of them more towards the Trump camp, and then obviously Trump more powerful and more, in some ways accepted this time around. I think that contributes to it as well.

Brian Anderson: Your book raises a question of historiography. It’s really a philosophical question. You find two strains of thought in the broadest sense in historical analysis. One, you could call the great individual or great man theory, and then the countering view, which has been associated with Marxism, but also Ferdinand Brodel, the kind of view that history isn’t driven by human agency, but by large impersonal forces beyond the control of any individual or group. So I wonder from the perspective of presidents and business leaders, do you think these relationships have been more the result of personal persuasiveness and power? Are they really a reflection of the social and economic and political environment in which they’re taking place?

Tevi Troy: It really is a great question, and it definitely is some aspect to the latter where it’s a reflection of the social and political environment. But I’ve never before really been a big fan of Great Man Theory, and I don’t necessarily adhere to it when it comes to the government side of things, but boy, when you read about these corporate titans and these industries that they created that didn’t really exist without them and might not have existed without them, it does make you think about the benefits of the “great man” and the power of the great man or woman in the business and in the inventor sense much more than in the government sense where you’re constrained by other forces more.

Brian Anderson: Tevi, what has the reception, the book been like? What’s up next for you? Have you started thinking about another presidential topic?

Tevi Troy: Yeah, the reception has been tremendous. I got to say, the Economist, the Guardian, the Week all named it one of the best books of the year. I got quoted in any papers because people recognized that this is a very hot topic right now, and I really kind of hit the crest of the wave in terms of corporate leaders working closely with the presidential administration. So very happy with the reception and honored to be on this podcast. In terms of what’s next, I am working through ideas. As I said, it’s not always easy to come up with something presidential that no one’s done before, but when I do, you know I will be hitting up City Journal for a podcast, interviews, possible reviews, and with most of my books, I’ve done a New York City based excerpt. So maybe we could do that again.

Brian Anderson: That’s great. Thanks very much, Tevi. Tevi Troy. Don’t forget to check out his brand- Well, it’s not brand new, but recently published book, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry. And don’t miss his writing for City Journal. You can find his author page and his books listed in the description. You can also find City Journal on Twitter @CityJournal and on Instagram @CityJournal_mi. And if you like what you’ve heard on today’s show, please leave us a rating on iTunes. Tevi, it’s always great to talk with you and have you on the show. And just to note that we’ve also launched a brand new twice-weekly podcast called, simply enough, the City Journal Podcast, hosted by CJ’s Charles Lehman. It explores issues in the news with a rotating group of MI’s policy experts. New episodes drop every Monday and Thursday, so be sure to check it out on YouTube and subscribe. Tevi Troy, great to have you on as always.

Tevi Troy: Thanks for having me.

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images