Since the rise of American industry after the Civil War, the titans of American business have wrestled with the very difficult question of how to deal with an increasingly powerful federal government. In his superb new book, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry, presidential historian Tevi Troy analyzes how titans of the corporate world, including John D Rockefeller and Henry Ford, dealt with government power and a growing administrative state.
In his book, Troy explains in detail how Rockefeller tried to keep the federal government at arm’s length, only to President Theodore Roosevelt break up his Standard Oil Company. Ford worked to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to stay out of World War I, lobbying so aggressively that at one point Wilson ejected him from the White House.
Ford, a fervent isolationist, fought hard to keep the United States out of World War II. But after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Ford became a strong supporter of the war effort even though he detested FDR.
Speaking to a Jewish Policy Center webinar Thursday, Troy provided vivid images of a visit to a Ford plant by FDR and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to see firsthand how the company was contributing to the war effort. At one point, Ford found himself in the back seat of one of his vehicles, sandwiched uncomfortably in between FDR and Eleanor.
In his book, Troy provides plenty of interesting stories and colorful detail about prominent business figures like Time magazine founder Henry Luce and Hollywood icon Lew Wasserman, a Democratic Party donor who nonetheless developed strong ties to Republican leaders as well.
While his book was published before Elon Musk’s all-out plunge into the 2024 campaign on behalf of Donald Trump, Troy said he was surprised by the “level of hatred” directed at Musk by the ideological left. He added that the “woke whiners” at The Washington Post who complain about efforts by the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to distance it from the hard left, don’t seem to understand something important: that Bezos is tired of losing millions of dollars as a result of his paper’s plummeting circulation.
