Charles and David Koch Are Not Who You Think They Are!

Silent Cal Coolidge is reported to have said “that the business of America is business.” Correct or not, it’s fair to say that by looking at only American business over the past 60 years, we can see the full arc of our contemporary history.

Think of all of the things that have been front and center in our politics and our culture that have sprung from business, going all the way back to the 60’s. Conglomerates, the free movement of money around the world, manufacturing changes, management and blue-collar workers, government control and union membership. Private equity, derivatives, lobbyists, corporate political contributions, climate change, think tanks and branding.

Each and every one of these things have been a part of the empire that is Koch Industries and has been touched and shaped by Charles and David Koch.

Whether you like their particular brand of politics or not, the company and the empire they built have to be respected. Whether Balzac was correct when he said that “behind every great fortune is a great crime,” is a question worth examining in the context the Koch industry.

That’s part of the deep dive into Koch that business journalist Christopher Leonard has given us in his new book Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.

My conversation with Christopher Leonard:

Are the Koch Brothers really as bad as they seem?

If I said we were going to talk about a story that involved grand homes, yachts, priceless painting, messy romances, private investigators and armored limousines, you probably wouldn’t think it was the story of a family and a group of men who have been painted as the greatest political villains of the 21st Century.

In fact it is. It is the story of the Koch brothers. Fred and Bill and David and Charles and their father Fred, who was one of the founders of the John Birch Society.


The question is not just how this political and economic dynasty has become so powerful, its how they have created such fear in their opponents, out of all proportion to their relatively limited political success.

Also the membrane between the Koch’s libertarian ideas and the GOP’s and Tea Party's social agenda may be a sometime marriage of convenience, but one that may not be destined for the long haul. Like so many businessmen who think politics will bend to their will and money, they are often surprised.

The first full scale look at the elusive Koch family is Daniel Schulman's  Sons of Wichita: How the Koch Brothers Became America's Most Powerful and Private Dynasty.

My conversation with Daniel Schulman:  (We apologize for some static in the first five minutes)