Steve Ballmer is responsible for some of Microsoft’s biggest success stories, as well as some of its worst decision-making. He’s also the king of sweaty executives—and honestly, nobody will ever compete with him for that crown.
And for his efforts, he is currently the richest person to come out of Microsoft, surpassing founder Bill Gates about a month ago, in part because he refused to diversify his stock holdings.
But I gotta admit, I’m kind of impressed with the way he’s using his wealth a decade out from his retirement from Microsoft. On top of operating one of the better-run sports organizations in the NBA, he launched an organization called USAFacts back in 2016, and he has been using that organization to do research on the U.S. government.
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Recently, Ballmer decided to use his role to do something that we haven’t seen since the ’90s—buy airtime on major networks to air basic information on how the government works. It’s a scheme out of the playbook of Ross Perot.
The Perot playbook (which had a digital element) is unlike any we’ve seen from any political candidate before or since, and it’s a big part of the reason his 1992 campaign turned out to be such a big hit—he essentially presented himself as a purveyor of common sense, and the reputation stuck. I mean, just watch this video: It remains genuinely endearing all these decades later, even if you don’t agree with what he’s saying.
As a longtime tech-industry CEO, Ballmer has a similar profile to Perot on the surface, but digging even a little deeper suggests a fascinatingly goofy executive, a guy who came from sales and was the hype man for a company that many would call endearingly square. Perot was a trusted figure, but someone who leaned on his Texas charm. But Ballmer, in a break from his past, carries himself as someone calm and collected. No sweaty shouting here. He just wants to tell you some basic information about how the government works.
Above is one of the videos, about the federal budget. It is straightforward. Ballmer doesn’t do anything other than explain the data that his organization has gathered to show what parts of the budget can’t be touched (slightly less than two thirds of it) and what is seen as discretionary spending. He explains how the most recent major tax cut, which came during the Trump era, affected both personal and corporate taxes (the personal tax cuts expire in a couple of years; the corporate tax cuts don’t). The conversation is largely straight talk, but Ballmer concedes a small personal opinion near the end of the clip.
“I worry about the size and the growth of our debt,” he says, before demurring and saying that you’re allowed to disagree with him.
Another clip, on immigration, doesn’t drop even the slightest hint of editorializing on the surface. (“Things might have changed since I recorded this in mid-June,” Ballmer says, in the understatement of the century.) But it’s worth noting that Ballmer’s wealth is somewhat tied into the issue because Microsoft (like much of the tech industry) hires many workers on H1-B visas and Microsoft advocates on the issue. Ballmer has not been on Microsoft’s board for years, but given the amount of Microsoft stock he owns, his net worth is affected by immigration policy, so it’s worth considering this fact. If there are any quibbles with these two clips, it is likely a result of how Ballmer’s corporate history can affect the perceptions on these videos.
Nonetheless, the clips themselves are pretty good for what they are: A multibillionaire trying to use some of his money to support civic discourse in a nonpartisan way.
In 2013, Fast Company described Ballmer with this headline: “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s Legacy: A Salesman Without Product Vision.” But the nice thing about culture is that we don’t have to be entirely defined by our first acts. Recently, fellow traveler Phil Edwards created a clip as essentially a reminder of the fact that Jimmy Carter was known in 1980 as the guy who barred a generation of athletes from competing in the Olympics for diplomatic reasons. But Carter had more than 40 years to burnish his reputation after a single unpopular term as president.
In a way, Ballmer’s work with USAFacts could be seen in the same light: Rather than being known as the guy who brought us Windows Vista and the “Developers” meme, he’s now the retired tech guru who cares enough about civic duty that he’s presenting plain information to his viewers. Fast Company, despite its somewhat backhanded critique of Ballmer a decade ago, recently gave him credit for having cracked the code to a great second act.
Better this than whatever Elon’s doing, I say.
Nonpartisan Links
Random fact of the day: Old sports photos have great atmosphere because we used to let people smoke in the stadium. (↬ Michael Tae Sweeney)
Speaking of things that happened a long time ago, this video of televangelist Jerry Falwell going down a water slide (key moment around the 5:30 mark) secretly has a lot of drama happening behind the scenes. Falwell had just taken over the PTL Television Network from Jim Bakker, who was beset by fraud and hush-money scandals. Falwell was brought in to clean it up, and notably barred Bakker from returning to his empire. Bakker would later go to jail and Falwell would wind down PTL. But in the midst of all this, Falwell convinced people to donate $20 million to keep PTL solvent—by promising he would go down a massive water slide at Heritage USA, the theme park Jim Bakker built, while wearing a three-piece suit. This is a video of him keeping his promise. What a clip.
The Radxa Rock 5 ITX, a new ARM-based ITX motherboard, is the absolute coolest—it’s essentially a step-up competitor to the Raspberry Pi 5 with a boatload of I/O and a small size perfect for throwing in a shoebox.
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