I’ve never liked the notion that America needs a businessman as president. Whatever success Donald Trump or Elon Musk have had in commerce does not automatically translate to success in governance. Leadership, management, judgment: yes, they matter in both worlds. But understanding policy, politics, and the machinery of government is something else entirely. You can be a great president and a great businessman, but there is no particular reason to assume success at one predicts success at the other.
Which brings me, somewhat inconveniently, to Mark Cuban.
Cuban became a prominent advocate for Kamala Harris during the 2024 campaign that ultimately ended in defeat. Hardly a conventional liberal, Cuban seemed to be a never‑Trumper without the zeal — less offended by ideological heresy than persuaded that government works better without Trump’s improvisational style. And unlike many business celebrities who wander into politics, Cuban brings not merely opinions about policy but an obvious interest in how policy actually works.
In some ways, Cuban recalls the more intellectually interesting Newt Gingrich of the 1990s: fascinated by whether markets and incentives could solve public problems that liberals instinctively approached through government. There was once a lively strain of conservatism built around precisely those arguments. It produced disagreements worth having.
Listening to Cuban discuss healthcare feels like a return to that world.
His Cost Plus Drugs venture is almost a political philosophy disguised as a pharmacy. The premise is remarkably straightforward: expose the actual cost of a drug, add a transparent markup, eliminate opaque middlemen, and see whether competition can accomplish what layers of regulation have struggled to do. Cuban carries the same argument into his criticism of pharmacy benefit managers, emphasizing transparency and market structure rather than simply demanding another government program.
Ask Cuban about DEI and he tends to make a business argument rather than a cultural one. His defense is essentially that looking for talent where competitors are not looking can help a company find people it otherwise would have missed. Whether one agrees with every conclusion is almost secondary to what makes the approach interesting: he tends to ask whether something works.
That instinct extends beyond healthcare. Ask him about technology, regulation, or economic policy and he works backward from incentives, costs, competition, and consequences rather than forward from ideology. Even his healthcare advocacy has crossed partisan lines. Cuban pushed the Trump administration on drug pricing during Trump’s first term, supported Harris in 2024, and more recently has sought Trump administration support for changes he believes would encourage domestic generic drug manufacturing.
Cuban is hardly absent from cultural controversies. He has fought publicly over DEI and other contentious subjects. But he rarely seems interested in culture war as an end in itself. He tends to drag the argument back toward the practical question: does this help the business, the employee, the consumer, or the economy?
That distinction matters.
American politics has become extraordinarily proficient at producing arguments that cannot be resolved. The participants disagree about identity, motives, patriotism, history, even reality itself. There is no obvious endpoint because frequently there is no policy question left to answer.
An argument with Cuban might actually end somewhere.
Of course, Cuban’s long public life would provide opposition researchers with plenty to examine. Anyone who has spent decades running companies, owning a professional sports franchise, appearing on television, and speaking as freely as Cuban does will have accumulated statements and decisions requiring explanation. That is the price of having actually done things.
But it would be refreshing to see a businessman enter politics with sensibilities one might not always agree with, but could at least argue with.
Market‑minded politicians who are neither culture‑war entrepreneurs nor reflexive defense hawks have become surprisingly rare. Cuban could be a fascinating adversary for liberals — someone who might force a real argument about markets, government, incentives, opportunity, and the proper boundaries between them rather than another theatrical argument about identity and grievance.
Perhaps that is an awfully modest qualification for the presidency.
But in American politics today, the prospect of an opponent worth arguing with feels almost radical.