B.F. Goodrich left the tire business in ’87; John Ong retired from the surviving aerospace and chemical company in ’97. Ong was a big wheel in big business, heading the powerful Business Roundtable. He and his fellow CEOs of the Roundtable helped slay Clinton’s ‘94 health-care plan, which they attacked as runaway big-government spending. A year later, Ong made an impassioned plea for big-government spending for his industry in the form of increased federal research and development funds.