Once the game started,Valentine was the boss on the field.Bush's seats were so close to where the manager spent most of his time outside of the dugout that "I could slap him on the knee,"Valentine said."But he never said so much as 'Time for a hit-and-run,'or 'Aren't you going to take the pitcher out?'"

Bush always sat in the stands,says former Rangers general manager Tom Grieve,even when a team slump meant heckles from the crowd.

"George was always right there taking heat from everybody.He was not there to reap the accolades,but to answer questions and promote the team."

A business administration

With about 100,000MBAs minted yearly ,an MBA president was probably inevitable.But no president,administration and Cabinet has been as marinated in capitalism,especially the oil business.

Bush's corporatelike team starts with Vice President-elect Dick Cheney,who resigned as CEO of energy company Halliburton to become Bush's running mate.In Powell,Bush will have the first secretary of state with an MBA,which Powell received from George Washington University.Two members of his Cabinet arrive as corporate CEOs.National security adviser Condoleezza Rice has a 129,915-ton Chevron oil tanker named for her.

Bush,who has an undergraduate degree in history from Yale,will have a team that is not free of lawyers.But it will be made up of lawyers who have represented such corporate clients as Dole Foods.Even Alberto Gonzales,the White House counsel,specialized in business law out of Harvard Law School.He was headed for a career in mergers and acquisitions before being appointed by Bush to the Texas Supreme Court,where he was regarded as a pro-business jurist.

Bush probably has an advantage not being a lawyer,Schieffer says."I'm a lawyer.A lot of times lawyers have difficulty in executive positions.They're too immersed in detail —they've been trained that way —and they become micro-managers."

Schieffer was in charge of most hiring and firing of Rangers office staff,but not when it came time to fire Valentine."George was the one to deliver the message,"Schieffer says."It wasn't something he told me to do.I had a great deal of respect for him doing that."

Bush also reportedly persuaded John Sununu to resign as White House chief of staff in 1991while working for his father,the first President Bush,and he wasted little time in allowing Linda Chavez to withdraw her nomination as Labor secretary after questions were raised about an illegal immigrant who had lived in her house.

Knowing when to get out of the way

Useem believes having an MBA president will be good for the country and hopes that it will encourage more top MBA graduates to resist the riches of Wall Street and Corporate America to go into public service.

"The value of an MBA is that for two years,you spend a lot of time thinking about how to run an enterprise,"Useem says."Most superintendents of schools and high-ranking public officials have never had two full years to think about that."joozone.com