Steve Jobs, the late Apple founder and digital pioneer, told President Obama in a 2010 meeting that his anti-business attitude and enthusiasm for federal regulations could spell doom for his re-election bid, according to an upcoming biography of the iconic entrepreneur.
Jobs specifically cited a number of impediments to job creation and future economic growth, including onerous business regulations and stubborn teachers’ unions preventing reform of the country’s education system.
The Huffington Post, which obtained an advance copy of the book – titled “Steve Jobs” – said the man “seemed to have transformed from a liberal into a conservative.”
“You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where “regulations and unnecessary costs” make it difficult for them.
Jobs also criticized America’s education system, saying it was “crippled by union work rules,” noted Isaacson. “Until the teachers’ unions were broken, there was almost no hope for education reform.” Jobs proposed allowing principals to hire and fire teachers based on merit, that schools stay open until 6 p.m. and that they be open 11 months a year.
If Obama did not become more business friendly, Jobs warned, he would be “headed for a one-term presidency.”
Jobs’s legacy, wrote Heritage President Ed Feulner, is antithetical to the president’s approach to governing. The man “was a living refutation of all that liberals constantly tell us about our country,” Feulner wrote.