Steve Jobs Was a Closet Republican?

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obama_dinner

In a conversation with President Obama last year, Steve Jobs sounded like an out-and-out Republican, according to another excerpt from the upcoming official biography.

During President Obama’s trip to Silicon Valley in the fall 2010, where he met several business leaders, Jobs complained about regulations, taxes and the teachers unions. I always thought Jobs had a liberal bent, but he sounds like a member of the Tea Party.

He told Obama he would be a “one-term Presidency” unless he became more friendly to corporations.

“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.

Huffington Post: Steve Jobs Biography Reveals He Told Obama, ‘You’re Headed For A One-Term Presidency’

However, even though Jobs focused on the typical buiness-leader talking points, he offered to make political adverts for Obama, and to inject them with some of his marketing magic:

Jobs even offered to help create Obama’s political ads for the 2012 campaign. “He had made the same offer in 2008, but he’d become annoyed when Obama’s strategist David Axelrod wasn’t totally deferential,” writes Isaacson. Jobs later told the author that he wanted to do for Obama what the legendary “morning in America” ads did for Ronald Reagan.

So maybe he was a liberal after all?

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