It Has a Name

Sebastian Mallaby contrasts McDonalds' success at adapting to the rise of anti-McDonalds' sentiment around the world with the way the United States just keeps becoming more and more hated:

But McDonald's has changed in more appealing ways as well -- ways that reflect the problem-solving grit of American business. It has listened to its health critics and adapted: It sold 304 million pounds of mixed greens in 2005, and the U.S. operation claims to be the nation's largest purchaser of apples. The company has bent over backward to demonstrate its interest in the environment and animal welfare; it has teamed up with the University of Miami to improve conditions for tomato pickers and with Conservation International to acquire its fish sustainably. Meanwhile, the franchise has kept up with evolving tastes: It has revamped the easy-wipe decor; its coffee is less watery.

It's a fair enough point, though government-to-business analogies are always problematic. Then Mallaby ends with a kicker. "American business succeeds in the world because it morphs, shape-shifts, learns from its mistakes; it is too paranoid, too anxious to please its customers, to stick with formulas that aren't working," he writes, "The question posed by last week's BBC poll is whether American government can mimic that agility." Well, what a nice center-right I-used-to-work-for-the-Economist way of putting things. Business good and nimble, government clumsy and inept. But of course the problem here isn't that "American government" has proved reckless and stubborn and trashed America's global image. George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, etc. have done these things. They've ordered the unilateral invasions. They've ordered the kidnapping and torture and indefinite detention. They've abrogated the treaties and refused to sign the others. There's not an abstract government problem here, there's a concrete Bush administration problem.

Comments

"George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, etc. have done these things. "

It's American society which has done these things, through these instruments.

Posted by otto | January 29, 2007 9:00 AM

Yeah, but the question is about what generalities apply-- one can argue that people in politics tend to have one set of defects and people in business tend to have a different set. Of course, Chaney has both.

Posted by MattF | January 29, 2007 9:44 AM

certainly this regime has made the problem more acute, but america has been running around the world screwing things up and making people hate us for decades if not centuries.

Posted by looj | January 29, 2007 9:46 AM

And for every McDonald's there are dozens of companies where the story goes like this - the CEO refused to adapt, customer concerns were ignored, lavish bonuses were paid out to incompetent executives while the rank and file saw their benefits get chopped away and eventually the whole company filed for bankruptcy. "American business" on the whole is succesful because the losers are flushed away and no one remembers them. Unfortunately the analogy doesn't transfer well to nation states. As a shareholder I'm happy with a capitalist system where I can pick winners. As a citizen of the US I don't really have the same flexibility.

Posted by vanya_6724 | January 29, 2007 9:47 AM

Mallaby's lament is just the latest iteration of the exceptionally enraging narrative (see, e.g., Katrina and the abandonment of NOLA): We right-wingers have made an abject disaster of governance; therefore, government sucks. No, fellas--YOU suck!

Posted by elle loco | January 29, 2007 9:58 AM

Yeah, I don't think it's fair to lay America's unpopularity in the world entirely at the feet of Bush (although he's undoubtedly made things much worse). There was plenty of anti-American sentiment and terrorism during the Clinton administration; 9/11 would probably still have happened had Gore been elected.

The problem that I have with the article is that it is stupid to compare the U.S. government to McDonald's, because THEY HAVE BASICALLY NOTHING IN COMMON (unless, unbeknownst to me, the U.S. government has started up a bunch of franchises and selling delicious grilled meat sandwiches).

Posted by Sean | January 29, 2007 12:08 PM

..and if you were to analyze McDonald's success as a business, I would say that its greatest strength has been its consistent, predictable products across large regions, NOT that it has often and rapidly changed to appeal to the whims of consumers.

And does anyone think of McDonalds as a salad place? When I think of McDonalds, I think of a hamburger (or Bic Mac), fries and a coke -- same think people thought of McDonalds when I was born.

Posted by theCoach | January 29, 2007 12:33 PM

Re: It's American society which has done these things, through these instruments.

Nonsense. "Societies" don't do things. People do. According to your view it doesn't matter who is elected to what office because "society" will just use them as intruments to do whatever. We might as well elect Pat Bucchanan or Ralph Nader; there will be no difference between the two of them!

Posted by Jonf | January 29, 2007 1:23 PM

The American government is not this agile for two reasons - one, the system is dominated by two parties who focus on key swing groups to win elections, leaving many folks alienated and ill-served; two, these two parties are inordinately influenced by wealthy donors and interest groups further skewing the political market away from service to the widest range of consumers.

To remedy the situation, one would first want to promote the method of instant runoff voting (IRV) for our elections. This ranked ballot system would encourage more political participation and organized parties, with the two main parties remaining the largest. It would encourage more participation because there would be a real benefit and reward for smaller parties to fill the political market and serve the needs of the current jaded or disinterested non-voters. "Big tents" and deal making then would be more explicit and the ability to accurately judge the views of the electorate much greater.

The second solution would be to deal with the inordinate sums of money influencing elections - the few dominating the many. It's not clear what the methods of the satisficial solution would be however.

Posted by Jimm | January 29, 2007 2:43 PM

One of the basic assumptions of modern historians, asserted largely in rebellion against 19th century ideas, is that individuals and small groups, even in positions of formal power, can change history only at the margins. History is a "flow", a "mechanism", and is governed primarily by institutional and other impersonal forces. The Bush administration is providing a much needed refutation of this view. We need to recover an acknowledgement of the degree to which history is shaped by the intentions and actions of the powerful, not necessarily overtly expressed.

Posted by Martin Bento | January 30, 2007 4:36 AM

Are you seriously arguing that a Democratic administration would be meaningfully different? Or that such administrations have been in the past, relative to their Republican contemporaries? How deliciously naive.

Posted by Noah Yetter | January 30, 2007 2:58 PM

Ignoring the fact that Bush is the problem, not the US government, also sets up the ever-handy "anti-Americanism" strawman. For conservatives this is used differently depending on whether it is being applied to foreigners or domestically. At home, anti-Americanism is located firmly on the political left, whereas abroad it is taken to mean against ALL Americans, regardless of their political/ideological affiliations. But in both cases, this sentiment has nothing to do with America, and everything to do with the Bush administration and its policies.

Posted by morte | January 30, 2007 2:58 PM

Re: Are you seriously arguing that a Democratic administration would be meaningfully different?

Are you seriously suggesting that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq (and turned it into a total mess), trampled on treaties left and right and flipped the bid to longtime allies, cut taxes (mainly for the mega-rich) so much that the deficit exploded, appointed rightwing extremists to the judiciary, tried to gut Social Security, supported an anti-gay marriage amendment to the US constitution, and bribed every scientist he could to deny global warming?

Posted by JonF | January 30, 2007 10:32 PM