The Bain Method

The Romney Campaign has devolved to the point where we now must ask, could they REALLY be this bad? I am beginning to suspect intentionality. Let us not forget that Mitt Romney attended the best schools money could afford. He has a law degree from Harvard and an MBA from Harvard. He was the Governor of a State. He was/is the CEO of a very successful business enterprise. Certainly he has the resources to hire the very best people available to run his campaign. Yet what we’ve seen over this past month looks more like an old black and white episode of “The Keystone Cops.”

Put another way, I’m 55 years old, overweight and out of shape. If I were silly enough to challenge, let’s say Kobe Bryant to a game of one on one, at what point would you begin to suspect something was amiss? When the score was 14 to 12? Even if it were in his favor? Suppose it were 18 to 20, still in his favor? At some point you would simply KNOW that Kobe was shaving points and showing extreme kindness to an old man. Particularly since I can’t shoot a basketball worth a damn!

Remember the movie “White Men Can’t Jump” staring Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson? Great movie by the way. Woody Harrelson played a pretty damn good – but unknown – college basketball player. He would sit in the stands. Wesley Snipes would be “styling and profiling” on the court and talking much shizzle. The Con would go like this. Wesley would be running his mouth and finally say, he could beat any two-man team present with…  – then he’d look over at Woody Harrelson, usually the loan white guy sitting in the stands – with that white guy sitting over there! The betting would begin. Why? Because everybody – the black players – simply knew that white guys were no good at playing basketball.

Of course they’d win. It was a pretty successful racket. The “marks” only saw your average white guy. They didn’t know who Woody Harrelson was or what his skill level was. They simply assumed based on his skin color that he couldn’t play basketball. Sort of a lesson in reverse racism.

I suspect something similar may be going on with the Romney campaign. We look at Mitt Romney and we *assume* that his goal is really to be President of the United States. We never stop to ask, “why?” When you look at his record as governor of Massachusetts, it certainly wasn’t a stellar record. 47th in Job creation. He left Massachusetts with a budget deficit. About the only successful thing he did was *sign* a health care bill that the Affordable Care Act is modeled after. One would think that a man with an MBA from Harvard could have done better had he actually applied himself.

You cannot look at Mitt Romney’s record and say that he is so committed to public service and making things better, that he feels a true calling on his life to benefit our Nation and fix the problems that ail us. Perhaps we need to dig a little deeper and look a little further? Let’s examine his business experience. The first red flag that springs to my mind was his prescription for our Automotive Industry. He felt so passionately about the subject that he wrote an “Op-Ed” in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.”

His philosophy can hardly be mitigated by the notion that bankruptcy as is the practice with much smaller corporations can ultimately turn into a positive thing. The theory that large corporations can be split apart and sold off piecemeal only works if there are entities present with the interest and resources to buy up these failed corporations. This was clearly not the case in 2008. The credit markets had dried up and there were simply no entities out there other than the federal government, with the resources or interests to do anything.

Although President Obama does not possess an MBA from Harvard, he saw this fact. Odd that Mitt missed this wouldn’t you say? So, what was Mitt calling on by way of experience? When you look at the Bain model, the cookie cutter formula was to find companies with exposure, load them up with debt which because of the assets of your consortium was easy to do, pocket the proceeds from those loans and then let the already struggling company try to pay off the debt you’d put on it. When the companies went bankrupt as they usually did, you then broke them apart and sold them off in pieces, making even more profits for your investors. You’d do it over and over and over again.

Was Mitt Romney a successful businessman? Yes he was. However, not in the sense you would normally think! The business he was successful at was that of a corporate raider. He was a vulture capitalist. He didn’t take businesses, turn them around and make them successful. If they survived Bain, it was because they had a solid core that Bain was unable to crack. They would ultimately have succeeded and done so quicker and easier had they never had any involvement with Bain.

When you look at the Romney campaign, you begin to get the whiff of the Bain cookie cutter model. Many of the elements are very similar. Mitt Romney has been running for President for what? Over 7 or 8 years now? He’s put together what appears to be an actual viable campaign. This is the “business” he’s going to ultimately blow apart. Based on appearances, he now goes to Republican donors and the money begins to flow into his campaign coffers. Just as he loaded up companies with debts before they ultimately failed and declared bankruptcy. He’s doing the same thing. Money is flowing into pro-Romney “Super-Pacs.” It is flowing directly into his campaign. Because things are being managed in such a slipshod manner, it is easy for millions to simply vanish.

Your next clues are his offshore accounts and his refusal to reveal his income taxes. If you were serious about becoming President, one of the very first things you’d do is clean up your tax filings. He’s had over 8 years to do this. The fact that he has not should tell you something. If you were *really* running for President, you would close your offshore accounts and move all your money Stateside. This would have been done long ago. How does it look when the person running for President doesn’t have enough faith in the United States to put his money here?

At some point you begin to realize, NOBODY could be that bad unless it were on purpose! I’ll give him being caught on tape. That may have been unforeseen. However, coming out at 10 pm and holding a – what the hell was that anyway? – a quasi press conference? Taking 3 questions and really not answering any of them. Why couldn’t that have waited until the next day? It was just going through the motions, to give the appearance of concern.

Going off half cocked on the burning of our embassies and the death of our Ambassador? Really Mitt? As a businessman one should know you don’t make statements or issue press releases until all the facts are in. Harvard Lawyer, Harvard MBA Mitt Romney never learned this? His Republican Convention was a complete mess! People look at how a candidate runs his campaign, runs his convention as an indication of his or her leadership skills. Could you imagine a Romney administration actually managing a national crisis? That is a frightening prospect to consider… certainly based on how he’s run his campaign.

The only thing that makes sense, the only thing that fits is, what if this entire campaign is a sham? What if this is just another way for Mitt to do the *ONLY* thing he truly is good at… and that is to redistribute the wealth from the deep pockets of billionaires into his offshore accounts? Something to think about.