Business

Liberals like to demonize big business, particularly oil companies, as evil empires at odds with everything good and wholesome in a truly progressive society. Executives leading these firms are arrogant, money-grabbing robber barons, drained of all human spirit whose sole purpose in life is accumulating personal wealth at the expense of the working class. They are consumed by a lust for power and domination of commerce that is rivaled only by the most studious of central planners.

But then, low and behold, this fellow John Hofmeister rides onto campus. A K-State alumnus, he's now president of Shell Oil Company. Last Friday, he delivered a marvelous Landon Lecture in McCain Auditorium with warmth and wit and logic that, might I write, undressed the collectivists like a gaggle of new born babes.

Oh, they stood in the aisles and in the form of weak argumentative questions attempted to sling embarrassing arrows at him. But these were truly lame attempts that in reality mock the questioners themselves lacking serious thought and preparation.

One student questioned Shell's shuttering of a Bakersfield, Cal. refinery. How could the oil giant close the facility and cut production like this for the sole purpose of driving-up gas prices in California? But Mr. Hofmeister easily parried the attack stating the asset was sold by Shell some time ago, and that it is operated today by a company better equipped to run a small cracker in an urban location.

Then a more senior progressive lunged for Mr. Hofmeister's heart with a direct frontal assault. Surely oil company price fixing would draw blood. But no, Mr. Hofmeister passed easily on this thrust as well stating that he seldom met with the competition, and that when he did there was always an anti-trust lawyer sitting between them. The audience chuckled at the liberal's retreat.

It was all rather comical watching them press their not-so-enlightened arguments against the wisdom of Hofmeister's well-honed style.

Later at a luncheon following the speech, he spoke of his love for the university and all that it taught him in preparation for his business career. Well, the room just fell silent. Even the table of local Democrat office holders had nothing left in their quiver, as they sat nearby in silent admiration of this bright and decent man - a man who also happens to run, of all things, an American oil company.

First published in the Manhattan Free Press, September 13, 2006.