In the wake of a bleak economy, GOP presidential candidates have taken to touting their business experience, especially former senator Rick Santorum, reports the Des Moines Register.

Santorum and his family are in the midst of an 18-day, 50-stop tour through central Iowa. While at a campaign stop in Winterset, Santorum blasted his fellow candidates for the premium they place on business experience:

“People say, ‘Well, we need a businessman there.’ No, we don’t! The president of the United States is nothing like the CEO of a company. The CEO of a company says ‘We’re going to do this,’ — Guess what? Everybody does it. I get up as president and say, ‘Senators, you’re going to do this.’ Senators say, ‘Who are you? We’re an equal (branch) of the government. You can’t tell us what to do.’

“You hear some of these folks who are businesspeople say “Oh, we’ll just do this and do that.” I don’t know what country they’re living in, but that’s not how things work, and they can’t work and, by the way, our founding fathers never intended it. We don’t have a king. We don’t have a CEO.”