Does America need a CEO in the Oval Office?

The star of those high-level political meetings was Mr. Iacocca, the recently appointed chairman of Chrysler. He was smart, charismatic, and pragmatic. He not only knew how to revive the badly wounded Chrysler; he also knew how to talk to the American public.

Through a series of blunt, plain-spoken TV ads, Iacocca became the face, first, of his company, and second, gradually, of a renewed can-do American spirit. In the ads, Iacocca looked straight into the camera and challenged prospective car buyers with the kind of underdog bravado that seems hardwired into the American character.

"If you can find a better car," Iacocca said, "buy it."

Chrysler recovered (the first time) and Iacocca went on to become a national icon. So much so that in 1982, and then again in 1984 and in 1986, he was the focus of spontaneous "Iacocca for president" movements.

Why would Iacocca make a good president? The logic, as expressed in one Wall Street Journal article in 1982, went something like this: "If a Hollywood star can, why not a Detroit car salesman?"

In each case, the push for president fizzled, more because Iacocca wasn't interested than because he lacked the qualifications for the job. In his autobiography, Iacocca listed all the reasons he rejected the notion.

"I don't have the temperament for politics," he wrote. "I'm far too impatient. I'm candid to a fault, not a diplomat. I can't exactly imagine myself waiting eight years to see if we could get an energy bill passed."

Attributes that fit a CEO – but not a president. Since Iacocca didn't make the run, we've seen Mr. Perot, another straight-talking, no-nonsense business leader, actually run, twice. And in California, the state that gave us our lone actor-president, the political graveyard is littered with high-priced tombstones marking the failed campaigns of a number of wealthy CEOs who have sought to be governor or senator.

In 1998, businessman Al Checchi spent an estimated $40 million in the Democratic gubernatorial primary and finished second with 12 percent of the vote. More recently, Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO, ran for the US Senate as a Republican, but failed to convert her business acumen into an election night win. And in 2010, Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, spent more than $144 million of her own money in the quest to be California governor, only to lose. Her consolation prize: Ms. Fiorina's old job as CEO of HP.

Now comes Romney, the former head of Bain Capital, the Boston-based private-equity investment firm. Until his GOP opponents started trying to turn his tenure at Bain into an irredeemable defect – suggesting that he was a "vulture capitalist" more interested in making money than creating jobs – he had made his 30-year career in business the central narrative of his campaign, not his one-term stint as governor of Massachusetts or his role in rescuing the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic Games. Whether he is now able to reclaim that part of his résumé, at a time when the economy remains the predominant issue, may well help shape the rest of the nominating process and perhaps the election this fall.

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