“You’re headed for a one-term presidency,” Steve Jobs reportedly told President Obama during their first official one-on-one meeting in October 2010.
This, and other blunt observations from the late titan of tech are contained in a new authorized biography by the author, journalist and Aspen Instute President and CEO Walter Isaacson, due out next Monday.
The revelations from the book were first published late Thursday in The Huffington Post.
Jobs apparently told Obama that his administration wasn’t friendly enough to business. He pointed to China as a model of a place without as many “regulations and unnecessary costs.”
He also had harsh words for America’s education system, which he deemed “crippled by union work rules,” a position he’s held for some time, since at least the mid-1990s. And he later told Issacson that he hated the President’s excuses for the gridlock in Washington and the inability to get things done.
The meeting between the two was almost thwarted before it happened when Jobs insisted that the President personally extend the invitation, although First Lady Michelle Obama had told Jobs already that the President was “really psyched to meet you.”
Later, President Obama heeded Jobs’ advice to meet with other tech CEOs and business leaders, hosting a dinner in February 2011 with Jobs, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison and then-Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz.
But the notoriously perfectionist Jobs even found fault with that arrangement, saying the guest list was too long and “he had no intention of coming,” although he capitulated and eventually did. The menu, too, infuriated Jobs, who said that shrimp, cod and lentil salad and chocolate truffle for dessert were “too fancy,” but the White House insisted, saying it was one of the President’s favorite desserts.
Still, the President and Jobs reportedly stayed in touch by phone afterwards, and Jobs apparently even offered to help design logos for Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, although conflicts with David Axelrod prevented that from coming to fruition.
And recall that the President’s statement after Jobs’ death was emotional and lofty in its praise, saying Jobs “exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity” and “he changed the way each of us sees the world.”
Issacon’s biography of Jobs is already, the stuff of legends, and not only because it promises to provide the most detailed account yet of the Apple founder’s life and mindset, but because passages from advance copies have revealed a trove of personal information about Jobs, such as the fact that he delayed early surgery to remove a cancerous tumor in his pancreas. Nine months later, he finally gave in after alternative health therapies had failed. The biography reveals that he later regretted the decision.
Jobs also reportedly did not like fellow Silicon Valley pirate Bill Gates very much, saying at one point: ” “Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he’s more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people’s ideas.”
Gates himself is said to have developed a respect for Jobs, albeit grudgingly, praising his instincts but pointing out he didn’t know technology very well and calling him “fundamentally odd” and “weirdly flawed as a human being…either in the mode of saying you were shit or trying to seduce you.”
