Bush 101: All Talk, No Management

There could be a brand of Bush 101 taught in business schools soon if James Hoopes, the Murata Professor of Ethics in Business at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass., gets his way. Just last week, he landed a publisher for Hail to the CEO: The Failure of George W. Bush and the Cult of Moral Leadership.

His premise: President Bush, a Harvard University M.B.A. grad, is proof that business schools focus more on leadership than on management. Bush, he says, "talks about values like freedom and democracy in Iraq and tries to pep up his subordinates during Katrina," like when he told ex-disaster chief Michael Brown, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

But, he adds, Bush "doesn't do nearly enough managerial work such as planning for the postwar occupation of Iraq or getting the supplies to New Orleans."

By Paul Bedard