Presidential Portfolio Makeover: George W. Bush
Oct. 26 -- Next month, Americans (those who vote, in any event) will head to the polls to choose a new chief executive. The major candidates and their running mates are pledging to steward the nation through continued prosperity and fiscal health. To determine which candidate is best suited to run the nation’s fiscal engine, we examined how the candidates handle their own financial house, and huddled with professional financial planners to hear their thoughts. The planners had some advice for the candidates on how to improve their portfolios. And if it doesn’t help you decide who you’re voting for, it may help you adjust your own portfolio.
George W. Bush doesn’t come across as a particularly temperate guy. Sure, he has cut off the booze, and he’s titular head of big swingin’ Texas (official state shell: the lightning whelk, official state motto: Friendship). But he’s still the candidate voted most likely to tap dance in pasties and a lamp shade.
So it’s a little surprising that this fundamentally squirrelly guy has such abstemious investments.
By all rules of logic, Al Gore should own Bush’s portfolio. He should sit ponderously at some mahogany desk, emanating responsibility and directing the movement of wealth in his best, most stentorian Commander Gore voice. But as it turns out, Al doesn’t really have all that much money in the markets.
Instead, it is the fidgety Bush, Mr. Party Trick, who gets to make those calls. By all appearances he has resisted the distractions of his Game Boy and done a capable — and, dare we say, perhaps even presidential — job, at least within the constraints of his political ambitions.
Bush’s investments appear “primarily structured to avoid conflicts of interest rather than maximize returns,” observes Brian Friedman, an investment manager at GHP Investment Advisors in Denver, adding that very few of his high net-worth clients have such a conservative portfolio.