Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney delivers a speech ahead of the State of the Union presidential address at National Gypsum Company in Tampa, Florida, January 24, 2012.
(Getty)
What kind of businessman is Mitt Romney? That's the question that is coming to animate the campaign. It's Mitt's fault, really. He ran as a man who would bring business experience to running government, someone who had turned around companies so could turn around our economy. He boasted that he has been a job-creator so he would know how to put American workers back to work.
So it was fair game for first his Republican rivals and now the Democratic incumbent to ask that same question: What kind of businessman is Mitt Romney?
In answering that question, we've heard he's a "vulture capitalist," who "off-shores" and "outsources" money and jobs, and whose business brilliance was ensuring himself a profit whether companies in his care flourished or failed. He was an ultimate speculator, a contract-breaker, a union-buster, a man whose business, in the words of a Bloomberg headlines, "yielded private gains, socialized losses."
He's a Gordon Gekko who espoused the idea that "greed is good," a Patrick Bateman of "American Psycho" whose line between amoral and immoral long ago evaporated. He's a man of the modern economy, not creating a product, but moving numbers to create personal wealth. He's a millionaire with endless tax write-offs, shockingly low tax rates and years of secret tax returns, hidden foreign accounts and, as the title of his memoir, "no apologies."
In short, he's no George Romney.
Bain has become a bane, polls shows Americans no longer believe Romney's role as job-creator, and as much flack as Team Obama has gotten from fellow Democrats for attacking Romney's business bona fides, the attacks have worked, and will just keep coming. Now that it's clear there are three years in which Romney has been secretive about whether he ran his own business, the negative spiral will just continue.
Romney opened up his business background and now can't stand his ground. His strength has become his liability, and he can't run away from it the way he has his other main achievement: near-universal health coverage in Massachusetts.
The Romney campaign invited us to ask what type of businessperson he's been. The Obama campaign has given the public a compelling answer. My response is different: why would I want a businessperson running our government?
I don't want a businessman President. Businesses aren't run like countries. Corporations focus on financial profit. Nations need to trade in social profit as well. CEOs, too often, value short-term gains. I want elected leaders who, too rarely, invest in our long-term well-being.
Let's remember for a moment the legacy of our first MBA President -- George W. Bush. Certain businesses boomed under his tenure: military contractors, the for-profit prison industry, his allies at legacy energy conglomerates in oil and coal. The country, though, didn't see the sort of efficiency, innovation and energy we associate with healthy enterprise. Creative accounting, not true creativity, was a hallmark of the Bush Administration.
Even if Romney's record was sterling at creating a business that served a real value, that respected workers, that contributed to healthy markets, we could still question how well that experience would translate to the Presidency. The President needs to listen to a range of constituencies, not just a board of directors or corporate shareholders. A nation needs to measure its success by the least of its citizens. A government needs to make decisions that spend money without making it back. A national leader needs to follow a moral compass.
Maybe MBAs are trained in those skills, maybe the best CEOs follow those practices -- and if they burnish those credentials, then I'll see their business background as good for the country. But until then, I want a President, not a CEO. And I want to be proud of America not as a profitable company, but as a vibrant, values-based nation.
Justin Krebs is a political organizer and writer based in New York City. He is the founder of Living Liberally, a nationwide network of 250 local clubs that create social events around progressive politics, and author of "538 Ways to Live, Work and Play Like a Liberal."
Comments [5]
Justin, you are a joke. I cannot believe you put your name on this garbage article. Obama couldn't run a McDonald's unless he was giving the hamburgers away for free. You cannot even compare Obama to Romney because they are in totally different leagues. Since when is being a one term senator/community organizer a stepping stone to the oval office? How did this prepare him to run the most powerful country in the world?? Obama would have NEVER been elected with his credentials if he was white. He was at the right place at the right time because of the color of his skin in American politics and is simply a puppet for the democratic party who put him into office. He has no real world experience at running anything. Right now Obama is like a monkey at the zoo throwing his own poop hoping something will stick to Romney because he cannot run on his record. Even Bill Clinton knows that Mitt Romney had a "sterling" business career and is "more than qualified" to lead this country. We cannot afford Obama because he thinks money grows on trees. We need a fiscally responsible president that has made a living making tough decisions. We should be begging Mitt Romney to be president. This is the GUY everyone wishes they had in their study group. He is a nerd that gets $#!+ done. Hello people...America deserves what it gets if they cannot figure this one out.
Sorry,Obama, I don't like you to be my president:
President Obama’s Executive Order amending President Ronald Reagans’ 1983 EO 12425 and placing INTERPOL above the United States Constitution…
http://fratres.wordpress.com/2009/12/24/interpol-in-america-we-await-an-explanation-mr-president/comment-page-1/#comment-8872:
Last Thursday, December 17, 2009, The White House released an Executive Order “Amending Executive Order 12425.” It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other “International Organizations” as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945.
By removing language from President Reagan’s 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates – now operates – on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
Obama gives himself control of all communication systems in America
Published: 10 July, 2012, 00:11,
http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-president-order-communications-770/print/
US President Barack Obama quietly signed his name to an Executive Order on Friday, allowing the White House to control all private communications in the country in the name of national security.
President Obama released his latest Executive Order on Friday, July 6, a 2,205-word statement offered as the “Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions.” And although the president chose not to commemorate the signing with much fanfare, the powers he provides to himself and the federal government under the latest order are among the most far-reaching yet of any of his executive decisions.
Democrats hacked the 2008 Obama election
Stratfor, the US-based private intelligence company, says that Senator John McCain's campaign knew that electoral fraud was going on in 2008 but chose to do nothing. What is going on now as President Obama faces changed circumstances?
Friday, April 20, 2012, By Martin Barillas
http://www.speroforum.com/a/JHJAYHFXYL12/71410-Did-Democrats-hack-the-2008-Obama-election
Judging by these comic book caricatures of Romney and an equally cartoonish acceptance of every starry-eyed platitude of Obama long since proven false, it seems some are looking for a political boss Prince Charming rather than a President as described by the US Constitution.
Competence and accomplishment is so overrated when compared to the "true creativity" of pandering and unaccountable spending while making stylish "progressive" nosies.
The Obama "attacks have worked, and will just keep coming".
Apparently Machiavellian deceit is this year's "Hope and Change".
I'll agree with Justin (and Obama) on this one...The President is MORE than a CEO. I offer those GOP and Independent voters who think that Romney offers a creditible response to the high unemployment that has characterized the recovery from the 'Great Recession' a chance to respond. Does Mr. Romney think that cutting taxes on the wealthy will really result in more hiring? As WJC used to say "that dog won't hunt".
The Federal overspending that doubled our national debt from $5T to $11T occurred during the Bush years. I didn't hear Mitt (or any other Republican of national renown) complaining at the time when it might have mattered. Now, when Fed stimulus spending is exactly what is needed to 'prime the pump', GOP and TP politicians want to toe the line on debt, a policy that can only make the recovery take longer. Like a poor dancer, their sense of timing is 180 degrees out of phase.
And that sound you hear is hundreds of millions of Americans saying,
"Whothe hell is Justin Krebs and why the hell would I care what he thinks?"
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