U.S. President George W. Bush paid his South Korean counterpart what many might consider a compliment: He called Lee Myung Bak a successful businessman.

“As a former CEO, President Lee understands the importance of trade,” Bush said last month on the Korean leader’s first US visit. Bush was thanking Lee for deciding to resume US beef imports after a ban related to mad-cow disease in 2003.

It was the kind of decision that Lee, a former chief executive officer at Hyundai Group, campaigned on before taking office in February. Yet, many of his 50 million people disagreed with him. A public backlash drew thousands of protesters into the streets. Lee had to delay his beef decision and apologize on national television. His popularity was dented.

Lee is but the latest self-proclaimed CEO-style leader to trip over his briefcase, not to mention his ambitions.

Bush became the United States’s first “MBA president” in 2001 and pledged to be a firm and forward-thinking decision maker. His team touted its lineup of Fortune 500 chief executives such as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. We all know how that turned out.

Thaksin Shinawatra, Thai prime minister from 2001 to 2006, sought to run Thailand the same way he did his successful telecommunications empire. Self-made billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, Italy’s prime minister, also deserves a mention here.

CEO leaders

While it’s impossible to generalize, these leaders came under criticism for making decisions without ample consultation with the public. After leveraging corporate success to become leaders, some were accused of using public office to advance private business interests.

What each learned—or at least should have—is that running a democratic nation and a company are two very different things. Since Lee is finding that out so early in his term, there’s time to reconsider his governing style.

“We should give the president some time here,” says Hwang Sung-ho, chief executive officer at PCA Investment Trust Management in Seoul. “He will learn from his mistakes and correct them.”

Asia’s fourth-biggest economy could use some shaking up. Its top-down business culture still favors the family-run conglomerates that decades ago put the country on the global economic map. The downside is fewer startups than one might expect in such a technology-savvy nation.

‘The Bulldozer’

Lee’s predecessor Roh Moo Hyun failed to devise a plan for Korea to find a comfortable place between wealthy Japan and low-cost China. Lee, a former mayor of Seoul, sold himself as the ideal antidote: a strong, business-minded leader who could reinvigorate Korea.

Chatting to public servants in Seoul these days, it’s not hard to discover unhappiness in the ranks. Lee wants to downsize the government, which could cost bureaucrats power and even jobs. Others chafe at Lee’s push to globalize Korea’s economy with a more competitive financial industry and tax system, looser labor laws and fewer restrictions on foreign investment.

The problem isn’t so much what Lee wants to achieve as how he wants to achieve it.

Many Koreans hoped Lee would run the country like he did Hyundai’s construction unit. His almost three-decade career at Hyundai Group, where he served as chief executive of its steel and construction businesses, earned Lee the nickname “The Bulldozer.”

Growth nostalgia

The moniker reflected his success in pushing for projects for Korea’s largest contractor. Supporters figured that impulse would help Korea carve out a clearer role in the global economy.

Running Korea like the conglomerates that still dominate business is a terrible idea. Yes, names such as Daewoo, Hyundai, LG and Samsung helped the nation rise from the ashes of the Korean War to become the 13th-biggest economy. It’s important to realize, though, how that happened.

After the war, Korea favored a handful of champions and directed banks to channel money their way. The result was rapid growth, and many are nostalgic for those heady days. The 1997 Asian crisis and the rise of China and India brought that model to an end. Korea has struggled to get growth back toward 10 percent.

It won’t be easy, with Korea being more about job protection at big, established businesses than job creation at new ones. Yet, politics make a return to the past impossible.

Honeymoon is over

“The challenge for modern Korea is that we now operate within a true democracy,” says Shaun Cochran, a Seoul-based analyst at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “As a result, decisions today are made through the political process. The leadership must engage in negotiation and a degree of horse- trading to achieve its goals.”

While that marks progress for Korea, Cochran says “the slower pace generates frustration. This frustration translates to lower popularity, which in turn feeds opposition resistance and further slows the change process.”

Lee shouldn’t be counted out. Aside from the beef misstep, he’s having limited success in persuading opposition lawmakers to approve his plans. Yet, many business leaders still give Lee good odds of raising Korea’s stature globally.

If anything is clear, though, it’s that Lee’s honeymoon as president is over. For that, he can blame his CEO tendencies.

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U.S. President George W. Bush paid his South Korean counterpart what many might consider a compliment: He called Lee Myung Bak a successful businessman.