Caring About Corporate Conflicts is Cool

In an episode of his podcast in April of 2025, Ezra Klein invoked us as an example of progressive watchdogs being overzealous in demanding that government appointees not come from corporate backgrounds. While we appreciate the shoutout (we actually would have appreciated the chance to respond–our Executive Director challenged him to a debate back in March, but Klein has staunchly ignored us), Klein clearly knows of our work more from our mutual pal Matt Yglesias’ complaints about it than from an understanding of its substance.

Specifically, Klein said:

“But I’d be curious to hear you talk about this, Zephyr. Because there are all these projects, like the Revolving Door Project, that basically say: Look, this person worked at this place. They’ve been involved in this thing. And we think that makes them suspicious.

So on the one hand, that might be true. I do think you can have a lot of interest to capture. And on the other hand, we know that a lot of the people who have been leaders in these areas — you could talk about Joseph Kennedy being the traitor to his class under F.D.R. on financial regulation — have come from these places. And you need to have that level of knowledge about the thing you’re regulating to effectively bring it under any kind of wise control.”

To be abundantly clear, we have never opposed nominees purely because they worked in the private sector at some point in their careers. 

As our Executive Director, Jeff Hauser, wrote with David Segal in Democracy Journal in 2020:

“[T]he skepticism raised by one’s past professional ties creates only a rebuttable presumption, which can be outweighed by enough positive evidence. Consider the frequently cited example of former Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chair Gary Gensler. Even after he helped former Senator Paul Sarbanes clean up the accounting industry following the Enron scandal, many progressives had justifiable qualms about Gensler’s nomination for CFTC chair at the time, based on his years in the finance industry. But his later tenure transforming the CFTC from a backwater into a bold and aggressive regulator can outweigh those concerns were he to be nominated again in the future. He reined in complex derivatives like the ones that fueled the financial meltdown, even taking on the Obama Treasury Department to push for stronger regulation of “over-the-counter” derivatives. And he “went to the mat” to block industry efforts to water down the Volcker Rule that restricts banks from gambling with their customers’ money. Corporate ties don’t mandate someone acts in bad faith, but they do make it more likely, and so sharp observers take both general and specific evidence into account with any potential appointee.”

Klein’s guest, Zephyr Teachout, also pointed out in response to the prompt that Biden’s Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, Jonathan Kanter, was both excellent and a BigLaw alumnus. A key point that Kanter illustrates is that conflicts arise largely from “switching sides” when officials move in and out of government. Kanter went from suing monopolies outside of government to suing monopolies as head of DOJ Antitrust. The much more common trajectory is for lawyers working on the behalf of a corporation to transition to a government post where they oversee it.

So Kanter is actually a great piece of evidence supporting our point of view–it’s easier to be ardent if you’re not switching sides. As Jeff and RDP Senior Fellow Eleanor Eagan have pointed out, this distinction matters for two reasons:

1. Officials (who are lawyers) have to recuse themselves from any legal cases where a former client is involved. But there’s no cause to recuse just because you are facing the same opponent in court; there are no ethical obligations to the other side, or privileged knowledge garnered before a (heel or hero) turn. 
2. The public perception is unharmed. A lawyer who goes from defending Amazon to a post at DOJ opens the door to concerns around whether they are fully committed to enforcing the same laws they just defended clients from. 

Indeed, we have no inherent issue with people who earnestly transition from the private sector to public service (although, as we lay out below, at what level they should join government is a big question). The issue is when government officials go the other direction and use their government experience and connections in the service of private firms. In particular, when someone leaves the corporate world for a political office, works there for a while, and then revolves back to the private sector, they have an opportunity to build relationships, earn favor, and, if they hold a senior office, even mentor or promote their own future regulators. Firms will even explicitly say that they are hiring former officials for their relationships in government.

(And, of course, if someone seems predetermined to only take a pitstop in government before returning to the private sector… then, well, it’s important to ask if they will ever earnestly transition into public servants. Rather, they may be burnishing their resumes and building out their networks with an eye toward privatizing public sector knowledge.)

The private sector rewards for public sector experience create a conflict in which the public good and an employee’s own career prospects may be in tension. Not only does it incentivize public servants to consider the interests of the private sector (and how their decisions as a public servant might impact future employment prospects), but it erodes public confidence in civil servants.  

A better overview of our position is:

1. Corporate experience should not be a qualification, in itself, if it doesn’t directly relate to the job in question. This is something we’ve butted heads with Yglesias on.
   1. A key part of this is that someone’s first job in the government shouldn’t be as a cabinet secretary or other senior leadership gig, which comes with immense logistical and administrative responsibilities on top of the obvious policy role and there’s not a lot of runway for learning on the job.
   2. One good example is Robert McNamara, who made a mess in the JFK/LBJ era Department of Defense, despite being accomplished, smart, and well-intentioned. (McNamara’s first instinct was correct, as he told Kennedy when the job was first broached that he did not know anything about government.)
   3. Figures like Antonio Weiss had shockingly thin credentials and expected senior jobs, and Jamie Dimon has been rumored as a potential Treasury Secretary of both parties forever despite no experience in government.
2. It matters what the corporate job was. A coder at Google might bring useful skills to government–their CFO or Government Affairs head likely does not (at least not that other non-conflicted figures don’t also have; the federal government usually is not wanting for people who understand finance, accounting, and policymaking). In general, we would actually love to see more people from the everyday workforce find fulfilling careers in public service. What we specifically object to is the shuffling around of an elite class of executives between the public and private sector.
3. When someone comes from industry to government, their potential conflicts should be rigorously interrogated. We should not assume that they will be willing or able to fully place the public interest over their personal professional and financial interests. 
4. Those leaving high level regulatory posts should not be allowed to transition straight into private work in the industry they oversaw; this would prevent the possibility of, and perception of, a quid pro quo where government favor is traded for lucrative employment.
5. We tend to over-index on c-suite types to the detriment of others with relevant experience.
   1. In particular, we undervalue career civil servants. Perhaps the best example of this is ambassadorships, which are more often given to corporate benefactors of winning presidential campaigns than to people who spend decades in the foreign service. This effectively creates the impression that there’s a cap to how far ambitious public servants can advance in their career, which in turn forces important talent to look elsewhere.
6. Public service requires skills that are different from working in private enterprise. We have seen no better example of this than Elon Musk’s destructive tenure at DOGE. A move fast and break things approach may work in the private sector. In government it kills people. 

So, yes, we are skeptical of officials coming from corporate employ, but it’s not a carte blanche opposition. Portraying it as such only serves to obfuscate the real ethical issue of corporate influence in government.

Image credit: “Ezra Klein in 2020 cropped” by Irn is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.