Shut Up, Fool

Bill Gates, speaking  recently during POLITICO’s Playbook Cocktails, said he wished “there was slightly more power in the presidency to avoid some of these deadlocks.”

Earlier in that same event he said, “You don’t run a business like this. … This is a non-optimal path … a business that is maximizing its output would proceed along a different path.”

(Look here for the original report, text and video.)

At Microsoft, multiple reports say Bill Gates was a tyrannical dictator. It was “his way or the highway” according to some. And, as underlings, while we might dislike such treatment, it was his company, and he was responsible for making it profitable.

And he was, without question, wildly successful at running a for-profit business.

But the United States government is “for the people.” It is not a for-profit business. That makes the President of the country an entirely different role from that of a corporate CEO.

About the current President and, more so, the office of the President, Mr. Gates simply does not understand the job. And when he says the President should have more powers so he can get things done, he sounds just as foolish as the actors and sports players who travel to foreign countries and then make outlandish and terribly naive statements that are well outside their areas of expertise.

Someone should tell Bill Gates to stop showing himself in the same category as Dennis Rodman and Jane Fonda.

Shut up, Bill.