Essay:Politicians Who Had a Real Career

This is a list of significant politicians who had a real career (outside of politics):

• Jim Bunning - Major League Baseball pitcher
• Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer
• Jimmie Davis - accomplished singer ("You Are My Sunshine") who served two non-consecutive terms as governor of Louisiana
• Benjamin Franklin - printer, author, postmaster, inventor
• Jack Kemp - star professional football player (quarterback)
• Barack Obama (see also below)
• Rand Paul - physician (ophthalmologist)
• Ron Paul - physician (obstetrician)
• Ronald Reagan - actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild, and spokesman for General Electric
• Rick Scott - former CEO of a major hospital network, now the Governor of Florida
• George Washington - successful military general, land surveyor and real estate investor

No clear influence in politics

• Herman Cain - CEO of Godfathers Pizza and accomplished businessman
• Maria Cantwell - software company executive (Real Networks, who make RealPlayer)
• Mike Enzi - accountant
• Bill Foster - physicist at the government-subsidized Fermilab
• Al Franken - comedian (Saturday Night Live)
• Herbert Hoover - geologist, mining engineer
• Rush Holt - assistant director of the government-subsidized Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
• Arnold Schwarzenegger - actor and steroid-taker
• Rick Snyder - President and COO of Gateway during the 1990s, later elected Governor of Michigan in 2010

Careers outside of government need further discussion

• Dwight D. Eisenhower - military general
• Thomas Jefferson - land surveyor
• Abraham Lincoln - land surveyor, tavern keeper, storekeeper, postmaster, lawyer
• Barack Obama - attorney and best selling author
• Rick Santorum - attorney
• George W. Bush - oil business, co-owner and managing general partner of the Texas Rangers

(please add examples)