Romney’s Bain Lie
The real story of Bain Capital is impressive. Mitt Romney chose instead to present an origin story that's utter horseshit.
Overall, tonight was a great one for Mitt Romney. The speeches that preceded his demonstrated what an phenomenally decent human being he’s been throughout his life. And his own speech was, if not the “grand slam home run” that most pundits said he needed, at least a stand-up double, hitting the right note and continuing the process of showing that the Republican nominee is what he is: a good husband, father, and citizen.
But he stepped on that message, at least to my trained ear, by telling an absurd lie about the origin of Bain Capital. I don’t have the speech transcript available but, in essence, he claimed that, at 37, he and his colleagues risked everything to “bet on themselves.” But, as everyone who’s been following the campaign knows, that’s utter horseshit. Romney was raking in the big bucks at Bain and Company and balked at risking his and his family’s future on a new venture. As most of us would. Certainly, as I would have if I had five boys to support. Or, hell, if I was just raking in the big bucks and had only myself to support. But he basically balked at taking a risk and insisted on a no-lose deal in which, if he succeeeded, he’d be rewarded handsomely but, if he failed, he’d go back to his old gig making the big bucks.
Again, there’s no shame in that. If I were making big bucks at my job, there’s no way in hell I’d risk my family’s future on a bet that I’d make even bigger bucks. That Romney had the leverage to demand a sweetheart deal is an indication that he was an incredible asset to Bain. That’s awesome.
But why in the hell would he tell us a lie that everyone listening would know is untrue? The true story is, after all, good enough.
UPDATE: Here’s the transcription of the relevant portion:
When I was 37, I helped start a small company. My partners and I had been working for a company that was in the business of helping other businesses.
So some of us had this idea that if we really believed our advice was helping companies, we should invest in companies. We should bet on ourselves and on our advice.
So we started a new business called Bain Capital. The only problem was, while WE believed in ourselves, nobody else did. We were young and had never done this before and we almost didn’t get off the ground. In those days, sometimes I wondered if I had made a really big mistake. I had thought about asking my church’s pension fund to invest, but I didn’t. I figured it was bad enough that I might lose my investors’ money, but I didn’t want to go to hell too. Shows what I know. Another of my partners got the Episcopal Church pension fund to invest. Today there are a lot of happy retired priests who should thank him. That business we started with 10 people has now grown into a great American success story.
Is there something I’m missing here? Was Bain Capital in a sink or swim situation even if Romney had the personal option of returning to Bain and Company whole? Here’s the Wikipedia version of the origin story:
Bain Capital was founded in 1984 by Bain & Company partners Mitt Romney, T. Coleman Andrews III, and Eric Kriss, after Bill Bain had offered Romney the chance to head a new venture that would invest in companies and apply Bain’s consulting techniques to improve operations.[5] In addition to the three founding partners, the early team included Fraser Bullock, Robert F. White, Joshua Bekenstein, Adam Kirsch, and Geoffrey S. Rehnert.[6] Romney initially had the titles of president[7] and managing general partner[8][9] or managing partner.[10] He later became referred to as managing director[11] or CEO[12] as well. He was also the sole shareholder of the firm.[13] At the beginning, the firm had fewer than ten employees.[14] When new employees were hired, they were generally in their twenties and top-ranked graduates from Stanford University or Harvard University, both of which Romney had attended.[15]
In the face of skepticism from potential investors, Romney and his partners spent a year raising the $37 million in funds needed to start the new operation.[16][17][14][18] Early investors also included members of elite Salvadoran families who fled the country’s civil war.[19] They and other wealthy Latin Americans invested $9 million primarily through offshore companies registered in Panama.[20]
While Bain Capital was founded by Bain executives, the firm was not an affiliate or a division of Bain & Company but rather a completely separate company. Initially, the two firms shared the same offices – in an office tower at Copley Place in Boston[21] – and a similar approach to improving business operations. However, the two firms had put in place certain protections to avoid sharing information between the two companies and the Bain & Company executives had the ability to veto investments that posed potential conflicts of interest.[22] Bain Capital also provided an investment opportunity for partners of Bain & Company. Bain Capital’s original $37 million fund was raised entirely from private individuals in mid-1984.[6] The firm initially gave a cut of its profits to Bain & Company, but Romney later persuaded Bill Bain to give that up.[23]
The Bain Capital team was initially reluctant to invest its capital. By 1985, things were going poorly enough that Romney considered closing the operation, returning investors’ money back to them, and having the partners go back to their old positions.[24] The partners saw weak spots in so many potential deals that by 1986, very few had been done.[25] At first, Bain Capital focused on venture capital opportunities.[25] One of Bain’s earliest and most notable venture investments was in Staples, Inc., the office supply retailer. In 1986, Bain provided $4.5 million to two supermarket executives, Leo Kahn and Thomas G. Stemberg, to open an office supply supermarket in Brighton, Massachusetts.[26] The fast-growing retail chain went public in 1989;[27] by 1996, the company had grown to over 1,100 stores,[28] and by 2008, over 2,000 stores.[29] Bain Capital eventually reaped a nearly sevenfold return on its investment, and Romney sat on the Staples board of directors for over a decade.[14][18][25] Another very successful investment occurred in 1986 when $1 million was invested in medical equipment maker Calumet Coach, which eventually returned $34 million.[30] A few years later, Bain Capital made an investment in the technology research outfit the Gartner Group, which ended up returning a 16-fold gain.[30]
Certainly, it seems like the founders of Bain and Company believed in Romney and friends, giving them a pretty decent stake; it wasn’t a case of some crazy (37-year-old) kids with a wild dream throwing caution to the wind. But it does read as if that first year things weren’t going well—although well enough that Romney still had the ability to return people’s investments.
To be fair, Romney’s entire speech was littered with horseshit…of course, in that regard, Paul Ryan is a tough act to follow…
Rubio blew Romney out the window.
GOP should have picked him.
@An Interested Party: Every convention speech in my memory–which goes back to the 1980 conventions—contained a fair dose of horseshit. Creative fibbing about he opponent’s record and the like is just understood as within bounds of the game. But this one, while not a game changer, just makes no damned sense. It’s a blatant lie about something that most observers already knew the truth. No fact check is needed here; it was immediately obvious as bullshit and derailed the rest of the speech for me.
@Jr: I thought Rubio was decent, but not as good as Rice. But giving great speech isn’t necessarily an indicator. George HW Bush was an excellent president but not a great speechifier (although his 1984 speech was quite good).
It’s a political speech, not a deposition.
There also are differences between literal statements and figurative statements. In the literal sense the only occasions on which someone “risks everything” is when they play Russian roulette or when they walk through Downtown Oakland, CA, late at night, without a Kevlar vest.
Besides, Zombieland wouldn’t know the differences between a capital contribution to an investment company partnership and a Capital One credit card. You’re conflating the sort of people who have OCD regarding politics with a category of people who don’t know and who really don’t care about the details of life, much less the gory details about private equity firms.
P.S. — There’s always risk in starting up a partnership, whether the partnership is flipping turnaround companies or flipping hamburgers. The objective of any partnership ultimately is to obtain a return of capital plus a share of profits. But it doesn’t always work out that way. If it always worked out that way then everyone would be doing it. In business there’s pretty much no such thing as a “no-lose” deal.
Unfortunately, dishonesty seems to be the default position of the Romney campaign, not a fallback. Lying and politics seem to go hand and hand, but these guys have taken it to a level that is a bit Nixionian.
@James Joyner: I agree, being a great Orator doesn’t make you a great President. But Romney speech just felt flat too me, it is going to look bad when Obama and Clinton speak next week.
Whoa, the journolist was fast tonight. Let’s obsess over a small factoid in hopes of avoiding any real discussion of substance.
If we limited ourselves to only discussing substance, we’d all be sitting here staring at a blank screen right now.
Of course, that goes for political speeches in general.
Here’s the early release text. Personally, I did not hear him imply that he’d lose it all except as showing common cause with his decision not to ask his church’s pension fund to invest. But I’m sure we’ll see this completely misrepresented for the next news cycle.
@ JKB
How many millions in government assistance did Steel Dynamics take?
Since so much of the Romney campaign has smelled of horseshit and senseless lies, I don’t know why you’re surprised by the Bain Capital lie. I suspect Mitt was trying to show what a bold, risk-taking entrepreneur he was when, in reality, he took no real risks and was known for his relatively cautious approach.
Large parts of the speech made me livid, particularly his jingoistic turn toward the end. Romney’s saber-rattling makes me nervous. I fear he’s ready to start another war just to prove his manhood. But, oh well, at least he finally showed some life and passion.
james:
Yes. And in case anyone is interested, that story is told here:
It will be very interesting to see if these shining lights are singing the same tune while the Dems meet in Charlotte…
i wish obama had a success story to tell us, even if it’s only slightly embellished……don’t think it’s gonna happen.
Maybe Romney, unlike you, doesn’t believe the true story is such a slam-dunk wonderful thing that he wants to shout it from the sky. (And, yes, under the same circumstances, if I could have gotten the same deal, I would have.)
I suspect that many of the people in the audience and most Americans do not know the real story because they are not political junkies.
Let’s just say this was a “composite” and call it an autobiography.
Well, while being a Harvard grad isn’t a big deal for the son of a Governor who went to the finest schools in America and got to spend his time in Paris at an estate, Barack earning a degree at Harvard Law and becoming a Senator ain’t half bad.
interested:
Yes. I like the part where he essentially said that the room was full of people who have no investments in the stock market. How did he do that? He said this:
“When he [Obama] took office,” the Dow was at 8280. “Today” it’s at 13001, an increase of 57%. So when Mitt says “this president cannot tell us that you are better off today than when he took office” this can only be true if “you” is referencing a group who have no investments in the stock market. Who knew that Republicans have no investments in the stock market? You learn something new every day.
It’s also remarkable to learn that getting rid of OBL doesn’t mean “you are better off,” even though Mitt also admitted that “every American was relieved the day President Obama gave the order.” How stupid of us to feel “relieved” even though we weren’t becoming “better off.”
Making sense of GOP rhetoric requires a highly flexible mind.
bill:
bill is obviously a member of the surprising group I just described: the one that has no investments in the stock market. And also was “relieved” when Obama got rid of OBL, even though this didn’t make them “better off.”
But why in the hell would he tell us a lie that everyone listening would know is untrue? The true story is, after all, good enough.
Look–if you want to believe he’s a ‘phenomenally decent human being’ you’re more than welcome, but there’s not only a gay kid who was tortured by Romney who will tell you differently, but also the results of every election he’s entered. People don’t take to Romney because they really don’t think he’s a ‘phenomenally decent human being.’ They really don’t. That’s his main problem, and there’s no way to disprove that by people dragged to a convention floor saying otherwise.
This doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be president. But the proper way to run for president as a hard-nosed businessman would be to have numbers and plans. But he has neither. All he has is lies. So we get these scenarios where James is happy to be lied to in the way he likes, but when the lie is aimed at a bunch of people who need to believe that Romney is the most swashbuckling Randian figure of all time, he balks. What gives, James? How dense are you?
Best selling author, self-made millionaire, the first black major party nominee for President, the first black President. How can he have gone through life and accomplished so little?
I love hearing guys who don’t sound like they could be shift managers at 7.11 talking about how Barack Obama has not accomplished anything.
@bill:
“i wish obama had a success story to tell us, even if it’s only slightly embellished……don’t think it’s gonna happen. “
Obama can do a “composite” success story, much like the characters he made up in his autobiography, along with the misinformation he let stand for a decade or so on the cover of that book.
@Derrick:
“Well, while being a Harvard grad isn’t a big deal for the son of a Governor who went to the finest schools in America and got to spend his time in Paris at an estate, Barack earning a degree at Harvard Law and becoming a Senator ain’t half bad. “
Obama also went to the finest schools in Hawaii as well as here on the mainland. I bet if you compared the privileges and money each boy received in their childhood, Obama’s was more plentiful, living with affluent grandparents. Romney’s father, however, was known for his work ethic, and having his children earn and make their own way in life. Romney apparently followed in his father’s footsteps in raising his own children in a frugal way.
The frog had similar questions for the scorpion.
Romney has what, four vacation homes? That’s frugal? Put the pipe down…
jan:
“The misinformation” you’re talking about never, ever appeared on “the cover of that book” or on the cover of any book. Speaking of “misinformation.” It was buried inside an inconsequential brochure that was probably seen by almost no one. Link.
This lie is even more glaring than most of your lies, which is saying a lot.
More bullshit. Madelyn Dunham raised Obama in a two-bedroom apartment, and she was still living in that same apartment at the time of her death in 2008 (link). The place is probably not much larger than Mitt’s car elevator.
Living in a two-bedroom apartment for forty years is not properly described as “affluent.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Armour_Dunham
Only in Jan’s bizarro universe is Obama a silver spoon guy and Mitt Romney the salt of the earth…
Because the target audience doesn’t recognize the horseshit, nor are they very likely to pay much attention if it gets called out for what it is. Your cynicism is selective, Dr. Joyner.
@James Joyner: I think you may mean HW’s 1988 speech (not 1984). (“Read my lips”), which was written by Peggy Noonan.
Romney vacation home
Here are some examples of the frugal Romney lifestyle. The cost of their toys is far greater than the total net worth of countless American families.
I’m voting for Invisible Obama. So much more lifelike than Visible Romney.
Oh my, Jan continues with her unbelievable delusions…before it’s all said and done, I’m sure that Romney will be portrayed as a Dickens-like character, born in the slums of Detroit and miraculously achieving success by picking himself up by his own bootstraps…hmm, Paul Ryan would be the perfect person to present that tale…
That new article in Rolling Stone by Dickerson indicates to me he rolled the dice pretty hard to bail the place out after Bain scooted with the loot, and even clawed some of it back. It’s titled “federal bailout”, but that is a bit misleading. He then used that to borrow more, even getting the government involved, and kept them in by threatening to scoot with the loot himself. Classic case of borrowing enough to make your lender your partner, and screwing him into accepting just a small percentage of what he lent. Maybe this guy is exactly what we need, vis a vis China….
There is perhaps a lesson here in why those old 90% top rates weren’t as dumb as they looked. Can’t threaten to run with 10’s of million’s of dollars in your pocket in just one year.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-federal-bailout-that-saved-mitt-romney-20120829
What struck me was the lack of mention of a war that exists and only vague hopes of more wars in other places.
The only mention of the guys in Afghanistan should not have been Clint reminding them that they are suffering for nothing.
@jan:
I agree, to the GOP it’s pretty obvious the middle class upbringing of Barack Obama was much easier than the suffering Mitt Romney had to endure as the son of the millionaire CEO of American Motors Corporation and Governor of Michigan. The horror of Romney barely making it through college on the stock portfolio his father gave him. I can’t imagine how hard he must have struggled trying to juggle
working at a jobselling the stock and studying at the same time.Jan thinks Obama had a better life than Romney????
Seriously…this woman needs help. Professional care even.
What have we learned this week?
Christie has started his ’16 campaign.
Ryan is a bad liar.
Eastwood has grown old and senile.
Romney needs to hope voter suppression is enough.
@jukeboxgrad: Note the classic assertion of authority in juke’s comment.
His indisputable source: a single source (Vanity Fair) that’s a hit piece on Mitt Romney, authored by John Kerry’s biographer, that doesn’t give any attiibutions for the key quote juke singled out.
It’s not quite as bad as juke’s rantings about Citizens United, where his definitive source was an article that said “some experts say X, but other experts say Y.” Further, when challenged to show a single example of his experts being right, he cited a completely irrelevant example.
As far as Kranish… remember Kerry’s pledge to release his full military records? Kerry, instead, chose to release them to three carefully-chosen reporters, and they all assured us that yeah, there’s nothing in there, trust us. One of them was Kranish.
Is that key quote accurate or not? I dunno. All we have are the word of juke and John Kerry’s biographer.
jenos:
“John Kerry’s biographer,” Michael Kranish, also happens to be Mitt Romney’s biographer. The book is called “The Real Romney.” The “source” of the quote I presented is this book, not “Vanity Fair.” I used a Vanity Fair link because they are hosting a portion of the book.
Instead of using a Vanity Fair link, I could have used the Amazon link for the book, where it is searchable, and where you can find the text I cited, on page 133. So you focusing on “Vanity Fair” is yet another example of you being ridiculous.
And you describing this book as “a hit piece on Mitt Romney” is also ridiculous. How inconvenient for you that Mitt’s own site references this book as a supposedly reliable source:
It’s also helpful to notice Kevin D. Williamson saying this:
How odd that “a hit piece on Mitt Romney” would contain an “engaging portrait of their courtship.” There are also many other examples of NR and other conservatives treating this book as a reliable source.
One more time, “the key quote” is here:
This must be your way of telling us, as you have already done so many times, that you are completely lacking in reading comprehension, and/or completely lacking in integrity. Is there something you find hard to grasp about the simple English words “Bain explained?” Yes, the passage “doesn’t give any attiibutions” except for the part where it plainly attributes the quote to Bill Bain.
And yet another ridiculous thing about you disputing this quote is that no one else has done so. In particular, Mitt has not done so and Bill Bain has not done so. Bill Bain is still quite alive, and there is this much possibility that he would say nothing after a major reporter falsely quoted him by name in a major book about Mitt Romney: zero. The notes in the book indicate that the authors interviewed Bill Bain in 2007. Are you suggesting this interview didn’t happen? Are you suggesting that the authors falsified the quotes from this interview and both Mitt Romney and Bill Bain have decided to not complain about that? How much of a pathetic fool do you need to be to treat that scenario as plausible?
So disputing this particular quote is one of the most idiotic things you have ever done, and that’s saying a lot, because you have a long history here of saying things that are deeply, profoundly, painfully idiotic.
Anyway, thanks for yet another vivid demonstration of the amazing Republican capacity for rejecting any inconvenient fact, no matter how clear and well-documented the fact happens to be. As usual, your inadvertent public service is considerable.
@jukeboxgrad: And yet another ridiculous thing about you disputing this quote is that no one else has done so. In particular, Mitt has not done so and Bill Bain has not done so.
My, what intellectual dishonesty. That is exactly the same argument I used when you spouted your insanity about Romney being a “felon” — the deafening silence of those who would best be in a position to understand it. And you rejected that out of hand.
Oh, and you harped on Romney being a felon, when he hasn’t ever been even indicted — but got hugely bent out of shape when I called convicted financial criminal George Soros a felon.
Do you have ANY consistent principles or beliefs, or do you — as I suspect — just make it up as you go along?
@anjin-san:
Many, many:
jenos:
More unfettered idiocy. No, it’s not the same argument at all. This is the argument you used (link):
You then failed to cite any such “experts.” Instead of doing so, you presented this excuse:
Those “experts” are not people who have been supposedly misquoted. They exist only in your imagination, and “their silence” is therefore also a product of your imagination. You cannot name them. You have conjured them from whole cloth. Their alleged “silence” means nothing whatsoever.
Bill Bain, in contrast, is a real, living, specific person. There is no possibility that Kranish would blatantly misquote him and Bain would fail to challenge the quote. So the comparison you’re making, like most things you say, is deeply stupid.
And it’s not just that Bain has failed to challenge the quote, and that Mitt himself has failed to challenge the quote. It’s that no one, anywhere (as far as I can tell) has challenged the quote, except you. No one else has been nutty enough to do so. That’s quite a distinction you’ve earned.
And speaking of nutty, it is so typical of your pathetic style that you are refusing to take responsibility for your bizarre claim that the passage “doesn’t give any attiibutions.” You running away from this problem is a great way to prove, yet again, that you are a lying moron.
That’s because Mitt is a felon.
I simply pointed out that you have no source for that claim. So let us know if you ever find one.
@Jenos Idanian #13:
Jenos: IOW………I’ve got nothin…….
james:
Aside from what you mentioned, there’s another one that hasn’t been mentioned. Last night Mitt said this:
The phoniness here is mind-boggling. This narrative makes sense only if one thinks there was a wall separating Boston and Detroit, and once Mitt crossed that wall he was surrounded by people who had never heard of George Romney, the governor of Michigan. And therefore he would know that he was not “getting a break because of my dad.”
This makes about as much sense as applying the words “struggling” and “living on the edge” to young adults who have wealthy parents and are choosing to not work, for years, because they have so much money in the bank that they simply don’t have to.
@James Joyner: “It’s a blatant lie about something that most observers already knew the truth. No fact check is needed here; it was immediately obvious as bullshit and derailed the rest of the speech for me. ”
So he even lies about things which didn’t need lies.
Wow, my holiday weekend isn’t even underway and Juke smoked Jenos once again.
James, I have no idea why you think therer’s a lie in there. Is this the new blogging lingo? A continuous attention-seeking disorder, designed to attract the outraged and anxiety-ridden?
Bain Capital was a new business, with no track record, and he and his partners are going door to door with hat in hand, trying to raise money. I’ve not had to do that myself, but I can appreciate the difficulty.
slim:
slim, thanks. But let’s be fair and make sure he gets the credit he deserves; he is the gift that keeps on giving. I appreciate knowing that I can always count on him to provide that same inadvertent public service, over and over again, like clockwork. It takes a very special kind of person to do that important job, and we are blessed to have several people who have the talent and exercise it so predictably.
You are seriously asking this question?
Im not sure I understand the outrage, James.
Consulting is a business with a short half life. Yes, he could have gone back, but those were valuable years he was giving up. As for fundraising, you simply have no idea how hard it was (and now is) to get capital commitments for investments funds. The $37mm figure says it all. And you should know there is something called the “GP Committment” which means they were putting in their own money. As a general rule, you don’t know if you are going to make any money in the business for years, sometimes 7-10. It actually was a very big career risk.
I guess lastly, their are more entrepreneurial models than two guys in a garage.
@JKB:
Substance? Romney avoided substance to present a potemkin version of his business career. Of course why would he want to emphasize the fact that as an LBO specialist, he made his $250M fortune by leveraging a buy out of a company, stripping way their assets, closing plants and laying off American workers? Conservative ‘journolists’ generally whitewash that reality.
I think it’s more accurate to say that he hit a 12-hop groundball up the middle for a single. solid for a singles hitter, disappointing for a power hitter. As for the “a good husband, father, and citizen” – who thought otherwise – every one knew he’s not Newt Gingrich.
@jukeboxgrad: While that didn’t jump out at me in the oral delivery, I noticed it in the transcript and thought it was fine. Of course being George Romney’s boy was helpful to him. Even aside from connections, just having gone to great schools without having to take out loans or get a job is an amazing head start. But, surely, it’s easier to think of yourself as a self-made man if you work you way up the ladder in a completely separate industry and another state than if you follow daddy’s footsteps in Big Auto.
@PD Shaw: It reads better than it sounded to me last night. I took him as saying flat out that he started Bain Capitol as a bootstrap operation and risked everything; that’s simply not true—outrageously so when compared to those who actually did it that hard way. But it’s also true that, even with a pretty sweet safety net in place, Romney and his cohorts took some substantial risks.
@Drew: Well, if you end up setting up a situation where you end up with money and a job no matter what happens, it’s a bit rich to pound your chest about all the “risks” you took. You didn’t. Real risk is taking out a second mortgage on your house to provide the financial capital your start-up requires. When did Mitt Romney ever do anything that really put anything of his on the line?
I’m not sure I agree with the detail of complaint, but I can see the same thing in a wider arc.
Certainly starting a new business had risks, including legal liabilities of various sorts. Of course, that was done with the backdrop of “being George Romney’s son.” Raising money and getting contracts for Mitt, or for George Herbert Walker Bush’s son, was going to be a bit easier than for the equivalently skilled son of a streetcar conductor.
So, the reversible contract is just a wrinkle to the bigger story, IMO. The bigger story, that James might be keying to, is that the lives of the 1% are different. And stories of their struggles ring kind of hollow.
P.S. And don’t blether to me about “career risks.” I’ve taken a heck of a lot more “career risks” than Mitt Romney ever has.
Shorter: It would have been pretty hard for Mitt to bust out completely, to end up on Welfare, right?
shaw:
You’re entirely missing the point, and it’s an important point. Take a close look at what Mitt said last night:
The key words there are “bet” and “taking risk.” Now pay attention to what Bill Bain said:
The heart of Mitt’s narrative is not the alleged “difficulty” of “going door to door with hat in hand, trying to raise money.” At the heart of Mitt’s narrative is a heroic Galtian figure who is courageously “taking risk.” Mitt is not telling us to admire him for doing something difficult. He’s telling us to admire him for doing something risky. Trouble is, that’s not what he did. Here’s the reality of the situation, as described by the key witness who was really in a position to know: “there was no professional or financial risk.”
So Mitt is being an immense phony, as usual. And the subject matter here is of crucial importance.
Mitt is all about privatizing profits and socializing losses. Mitt is all about making sure that “taking risk” only applies to little people, while people like him are insulated from risk. That’s the story of Bain: Mitt made money even when his companies failed, and especially when his companies failed. Mitt’s entire philosophy of business, economics and politics is to laugh all the way to the Cayman Islands while not giving a shit about all the little people who are crushed when companies fail. Mitt has been a pioneer in creating a system where that’s just how things work, and as president he would take us even further down that road.
That’s why it’s quite important to know what Mitt really means when he says “business and growing jobs is about taking risk.” In his world, “taking risk” applies to other people, not people like him.
And this is just a longer way of saying what Grumpy said: “if you end up setting up a situation where you end up with money and a job no matter what happens, it’s a bit rich to pound your chest about all the ‘risks’ you took.”
drew:
Naturally. That’s why Bill Bain said “there was no professional or financial risk.” There’s no problem in the fact that he directly contradicts your claim, because we should just accept that he’s wrong and you’re right. Even though he was there, and the company is named after him, and he was running the show, and he’s the one who made the deal with Mitt. Whereas you are an anonymous internet commenter who wasn’t there and is offering no evidence whatsoever to support your claim that Bill Bain’s statement is false.
Makes perfect sense. Yet another vivid demonstration of the amazing Republican ability to reject any and all inconvenient facts.
james:
Your denial is roughly as deep as Drew’s. Tell us again your basis for flatly, blatantly, diametrically contradicting what Bill Bain said.
This statement of yours is quite reasonable and valid, and the key thing to notice is that you said “easier,” not “easy.” You’re making a comparison, not an absolute statement. Trouble is, Mitt said something stronger, and it was an absolute statement. He said “I’d never really know if I was getting a break because of my dad.” His claim is this: because he went to “a completely separate industry and another state,” this suppposedly demonstrates that he knows he wasn’t “getting a break because of [his] dad.” But of course he was still getting lots of breaks because of his dad. A person who is not a phony would have no trouble admitting that, and would be careful to not gloss over that.
A key sign of narcissism is taking undeserved credit. Mitt does this repeatedly, and this is a perfect example.
derrick:
Not to quibble, but “estate” is an understatement. It was 30 months living in a palace, with servants (link), during the Vietnam war.
His trip began in 7/66, when he was 19. That was great timing for him: ’67, ’68 and ’69 were the worst years of the war, for us. We lost about 40,000 troops in that period, or about 2/3 of the total for the entire war.
At the time, ordinary people his age were drafted and died, if they were too poor to escape to college or France. But just a couple of months before he escaped to France, Mitt joined a demonstration “[proclaiming] his support for Lyndon Johnson’s ever-expanding draft” (link). So his attitude was that the war was a great idea as long as it was fought by someone other than him. (Notice how this corresponds with his attitude about “taking risk” in business.)
And his thinking along these lines apparently applies to the next generation, too. It seems to not be a problem for him that the total military service of his five grown sons adds up to zero. Here are his thoughts on the subject:
Touring Iraq in a Humvee, touring the US in a Winnebago, what’s the difference?
(By the way, George Romney also never served, but he at least had the decency to raise questions about the war, despite being a Republican. It’s too bad that this had the effect of terminating his political career.)
fiona:
Yup. And he knows that lots of people not named Romney badly need a job and therefore can be counted on to fight that war.
Similar “saber-rattling” from, say, Palin would be marginally less despicable, because she at least has a son who served.
@jukeboxgrad: Oddly, I think it’s a defensive mechanism rather than a character flaw. I think he hates talking about this stuff. He comes from a culture that says the rich shouldn’t talk about their money. But he has no choice: not only is he being attacked for the “vulture capitalism” but his business acumen is his only selling point.
Interestingly, I was at an off-the-record thing with Romney very early in the cycle, shortly after he wrapped up the nomination. In his introductory remarks he said, essentially, “Shucks, anybody could have made a lot of money doing what I was doing given how fast the market was growing. I got lucky.” There were too many of us there for me to get in a question but I wanted to tell him, “Governor, I appreciate your modesty but you might need to refine your sales pitch a little.”
I don’t mind the “I worked hard and earned my money” story. Even with his enormous head start, I think it happens to be true. But I think he over-corrected last night.
I have the same comment for those who want to critique and think its all so easy: come on in, the water is fine. What are you waiting for? EZ money!
Of course, no one will do so, because they find out their simple minded notions of how easy it is…..are, well, simple minded.
@James Joyner:
What I was just thinking was that given both campaigns are less than forthright on the real problems with job creation, I’m going to ignore that part of it. I’m also going to ignore the intangible “just trust me” because that is obviously designed to be a wide net, to catch as many rubes as possible.
So I’m just going back to my fiscal responsibility, and go with cost accounting on published plans.
Barack Obama Debt Plan Reduces Deficit While All Other Republican Candidates Increase Deficit
I won’t fall for a “who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes” campaign.
Heh, from that:
Maybe Paul’s delegates seated themselves at the wrong convention.
@JKB: A journolist that includes someone that was at Romney’s secret bloggers meeting (James Joyner)?
Drew: the argument is not that investment is easy. The argument is that Mitt Romney grew up extremely privileged and that helped tremendously. He started on 3rd base. Further, when he set up Bain Capital, he made sure he had an exit plan in place (which is smart, and I don’t have a problem with it at all!), so he wasn’t taking some huge personal risk for which he deserves kudos.
James,
Fascinating. Too bad that candid self-awareness doesn’t show up in his policy proposals (nowadays, anyway).
james:
I think you’re trying really hard to avoid facing the sad reality of who this man is.
Naturally. That’s why he can’t stop blurting out things like this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
These are all ways of saying this: ‘look how rich I am, especially compared with you.’
I’m deeply familiar with the culture you’re talking about. Mitt “comes from a culture that says” this about money: it’s an object of worship, and having a lot of it is an indication of great personal virtue (and the reverse is also true: poor people deserve to be poor). And while it’s considered déclassé to be too ostentatious, it’s quite normal to drop lots of hints so everyone can know your status in the pack. Because status is everything, and the key to status is money.
But he does have a choice: he can talk honestly about his business career, and take credit for doing various things that required him to be smart and industrious, while also acknowledging that he was handed a very big head start. And while also showing real empathy for the rest of us who are not so lucky. He fails miserably at this.
I have no idea why you reacted that way, because glossing over the importance of luck (in both directions) is a key element of Randism. So in this remark of his he was being uncharacteristically human and adult. He was also refraining from his normal narcissism of taking undeserved credit.
It becomes a problem when he glosses over the importance of being born on 3rd base (to use the image that Rob mentioned), and also glosses over the importance of every other kind of luck. And glossing over these things is a central and pernicious part of the economic and political philosophy that he represents.
drew:
As usual, your reading comprehension sucks. No one said it’s “easy.” What Bill Bain said is that it was free of risk. Let us know if you’re not familiar with the meaning of those small words.
david:
The full horror of that struggle begins to really hit home when you contemplate their diet at the time. As Ann Romney said the other night:
Most people don’t realize how much restraint she showed by refraining from mentioning the cement floor. That came up in an earlier interview, in 1994. So did a lot of other things (link):
I find it slightly interesting that the exact same phrase (“a lot of pasta and tuna fish”) comes up in statements she made in 1994 and 2012. I have a feeling that she likes to say those words and has a lot of practice. But the best part is how she says “they were not easy years … we couldn’t afford a desk … [we were] struggling students … we were living on the edge … [we] learned hard lessons” while also admitting that they both had “wealthy” parents and that they were both unemployed by choice because they were able to live off the stock portfolio handed to them by George Romney. But the other day she wanted us to know that “our dining room table was a fold down ironing board.”
Like Mitt, she has the narcissistic quality of expecting undeserved credit.
Colbert empathizes with the suffering of these “struggling students:”
So much for this entirely fictional claim from jan:
Naturally. George Romney was so intent on “having his children earn and make their own way in life” that he handed Mitt all the money he needed to live without working, for years.
It’s helpful to remember something else Ann Romney said this week:
Of course not. Even though he had “wealthy” parents who handed him so much money that he and his wife never had to work (or seek student loans) while he spent years getting an expensive education. The theme of the convention is “We Built This.” Which applies to Mitt’s fortune, as long as you ignore everything that was handed to him on a silver platter.
And the problem is not that they were handed so much. The problem is that they were handed so much and could still see themselves as “struggling” and “living on the edge,” and still claim, even now, that “Mitt Romney was not handed success.” Except that he was “handed success.” He took that success and built even more success (largely by hurting little people), but what happened first is that he was indeed “handed success.”
The cluelessness is spectacular. So Mitt is the perfect person to implement Ryan’s Galtian budget, because Mitt has no clue what life is like for the people who live outside the bubble that has sheltered him since birth. Which means that he can keep on doing what he’s been doing for his entire career: crushing little people while being unconstrained by any sense of what their suffering is like.
By the way, in a comment above I said this:
I meant to post that after posting what’s in this comment. Because I posted in the wrong order, there was no way to know who I was quoting when I mentioned “struggling” and “living on the edge.” Sorry for the confusion.
How long before he claims he was born in a log cabin?
@Drew: I have the same comment for those who want to critique and think its all so easy: come on in, the water is fine. What are you waiting for? EZ money!
Yes. We are waiting for someone to provide EZ money to capitalize whatever ideas we might have at no risk to ourselves. Although some of us didn’t wait, and financed our efforts through student loans, home equity loans (after working for 20 years to get some home equity) and credit card debt. Stupid, I know, but I forgot to ask my Dad to provide a stock portfolio and pay for my education…
I would officially like to invite the entire commenting crew here at OTB to enter into the private equity community. I’d be happy to give you each a list of names of potential limited partners.
I look forward to the announcement of the successful first closing on your funds. It’s easy money’, man. Can’t believe you guys haven’t been in on the gig yet. Easy money.
You will send me those announcements, right? (Snicker)
Then why haven’t you posted the list?
As juke is saying: totally ignoring (not downplaying a little bit – TOTALLY IGNORING) privilege is now central to RW ideology.
We can have a reasonable discussion about how to weigh privilege/luck vs. hard work/other merit. That’s fine. But over and over and over I see this total rejection of even accepting there is such a thing as privilege (in particular) or luck.
The guy was born the son of a CEO and governor of a state, paid for college by selling stock dad gave him, weathered Vietnam in France on a mission while apparently being all for the war and the draft for others, and on and on and on. 3rd base is underselling it. Dude was born mid-slide into home plate.
He is the antithesis of self-made, even if he worked very hard and is very good at what he does
@Drew:
Somehow you again fail to realize no one is saying Romney’s work at Bain, sucking money and life out of companies while providing nothing of value to the economy was easy. We’re saying that to describe it as a risk, while having a his old job and a cover story waiting for him as a backup is pretty much understood to be the opposite of risky.
@Drew:
Willfully obtuse.
You are making no attempt whatsoever to address the actual argument.
It is not that private equity is “easy.” It’s that the Mitt Romneys of the world have it easy. The two are not one and the same.
Taking what you’ve said here in the past at face value, you != Romney. Totally different situations.
@James Joyner:
You know, I’d respect Mitt Romney a lot more if he did say “Shucks, anybody could have made a lot of money doing what I was doing given how fast the market was growing. I got lucky.” I’d respect him if he said, “I had both good luck, and a very fortunate position from which to work my way into the financial world and to become extremely wealthy. I’ve been privileged and blessed, and now, I want to give back to America for all that I was so able to accomplish here. Not everybody has the privileges or the luck that I enjoyed. I want to reach out and help those people achieve their dreams too.”
Of course if he said that, he’d be a Democrat. I might even vote for him.
I used to think the thumbs up thumbs down thing was stupid. I now know its very useful.
I always know I’m doing my job when I get overwhelmingly thumbs down. I also know who the crew is who just sucks each other Johnson’s with the overwhelming thumbs up. It’s fascinating.
You losers have a nice day. When you want take your heads out of your asses and make something of yourselves and not just bitch and whine an Internet site you let me know.
And if you want in on the easy money gig let me know. It’s abundantly clear that there are fabulous investors commenting here just waiting to be discovered. (snicker)
@Drew:
Were you cross posting? Your responses just now appear don’t appear to actually address the subject being discussed.
@Drew:
We are in the presence of obvious brilliance, and unworthy of his wisdom. (snicker)
@David M:
Sorry, David. I’ve stopped reading most of the responses here. I’ve also sworn off debating turnips.
@Drew:
Two things. First, if you’ve got reasonable an experienced people who agree with you, you don’t need to farm out their money here. Just get them to post. If they are patient and rational, they can make their case.
On your latest offer .. it’s funny how much it parallels a thought I was having based on your earlier comments. I was thinking that if some random unemployed person talked to me about jobs, I could just say “hey, why don’t you just program Android apps? I can hook you up. If you want in on the easy money gig let me know.”
Of course, I’d have to be a monumental dick to say something like that, because many people didn’t have the advantages I did. They didn’t have a dad who bought them college. They didn’t learn a trade that just happened to be in great demand.
@Drew:
And if you want in on the easy money gig let me know.
I do! Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
@Drew:
Could that be the cause of your reading comprehension problems? Most people would describe jumping into a conversation before figuring out what was being discussed as “unhelpful”.
@ Drew
Comments like this are getting to be a habit for you. It’s tedious. Do you have anything to contribute beyond telling us how rich you are and dick chat?
@anjin-san:
I think Drew had a happy view of his own comments before the ratings went in. He’d say “I’m Drew, and here’s what I think” and assume that most people just accepted his argument from authority. What a shock the first round of voting must have been!
Of course the sad thing is that he hasn’t learned how to game the system. If he was as bright as he thinks he is, he could. He would just write patient, explanatory, arguments which come around to something “right” but not “mean.”
To double down on the “mean,” to rack up the down-votes, to convince oneself that “it is all of you it’s not me” …. not as good.
@grumpy realist: “P.S. And don’t blether to me about “career risks.” I’ve taken a heck of a lot more “career risks” than Mitt Romney ever has. ”
For 90% of us, every day is more of a career risk than Mitt’s taken in his entire life.
@Derrick: meh, there’s 100 other senators who got elected somehow- still nothing makes my leg tingle about obama. he’s just not qualified for such a job.
remember, the kennedy clan were all silver spoon kids, but they squandered the money instead of building something of substance with it.
Well, to be fair, his reputation is certainly taking a beating the longer he is in the presidential race…
To be fair once again, it might be a little difficult to come up with such a list while one is comfortably ensconced in one’s mother’s basement…
Hmm…perhaps like sad little Tsar Nicholas, Drew also suffers from projection, as this is a trope that he has mentioned on more than one occasion…
drew:
I did let you know. I asked you for the list (“I’d be happy to give you each a list of names of potential limited partners”). So where is it?
I should have realized that taking what you said seriously was a mistake. It always is.
That would explain why the things you say don’t come anywhere near addressing what other commenters have said (as David also pointed out).
Promises, promises. Your oath is obviously worthless.
Another important Replican trait: the ability to take any data from your environment and figure out how to make it support your existing beliefs, even if this requires twisting the data inside out. This is a good way to make sure you never learn anything new. But thanks for helping us learn this about you, and the group you so nicely exemplify. If you can’t learn anything, the next best thing is the way you inadvertently help the rest of us learn something.
@john personna:
Nice straw man.
@Drew:
Shrug. Why don’t you just get someone to ghostwrite for you? If you are as awesome as you say you are, you can get Noonan.
One of my favorite things about the internet is when illiterates mumble the words “straw man” in a way that makes it obvious that they have no idea what the term actually means.
@Drew:
Why are so many conservatives obsessed with sex?
@al-Ameda:
Weak, just like all the other responses.
Good night, ladies.
The misogyny is also a nice touch.
Hmm…homophobia, or perhaps misogyny, and an obsession with sex…it must get lonely in mom’s basement…
@Drew: Sure–I’ve got three projects I’m working on right now. I estimate that one of them will need roughly $200K in capital (educational software to teach Chinese characters via video games) one will need several million since it’s a VC fund (international nanotech investing), and the third is a wild-assed crazy project (high-altitude energy generation) that needs money for research as well as launch capabilities. Anything your guys might be interested in?
(Then there’s also the long-term ideas I have where am waiting for the technology to get just a little bit better. Forget finding the next Facebook–I want better carbon nanotube production methods. And better energy beaming technology. And more efficient solar cell technology….)
(There’s also the work done by a mad scientist acquaintance of mine on trying to get carbon sp2 orbitals to re-fuse into sp3 orbitals. That’s what I was–production of diamond blocks, a meter on a side…)
@Drew:
Weak, just like your unexplained obsession with gay sex.