Mitt Romney has surprised everyone on Wednesday when he drowned Barack Obama in loads of bullshit. As Obama tried to present some numbers and facts, which is the last thing you want to do in a debate, Romney was vigorously spouting voter-pleasing shit out of his mouth. And it worked wonders.
Obama lost the debate, clearly. His boring, unemotional and distant performance contrasted well with Romney’s sudden humanity. When did Romney become so normal and relatable? My guess is as good as anyone else’s, but I’ll still go ahead and say that it probably was a check with seven zero’s given by a corporate donor which made him so blissful. And there isn’t anything objectively bad about it, the guy made his name making money and deciding where to invest money, but the bigger, and more important question still remains: If by sudden change of events, this guy becomes the next president; would he be a good one?
To answer this question you’d have to look at his biography. I’m going to say it right now that the issue of money, as in him being rich from the day he was born is not going to be raised in favor of his critique or approval. His record, however, in dealing with money, and making big decisions regarding money, will be scrutinized obsessively.
Willard Mitt Romney was born on March 24th, 1947, which makes him a standard baby boomer. Born into a wealthy family, and to a successful executive, governor and presidential candidate George Romney, Mitt had a lot of comfort and people to look up to. He attended Stanford University, Brigham Young University, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.
He is also a Mormon, who left US for a thirty month stay in France to dodge the draft. There he went from house to house and tried to convert people into his faith. He also got into a car accident, not of his fault, which killed one of the passengers in his car, the wife of the mission president.
Upon his return he graduated Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University and married his long time girlfriend Ann. After, he made lots of kids and attended Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School, where he graduated with highest honors.
Romney’s a smart guy, there’s no doubt about it.
His business career began with consulting. He joined the Boston Consulting Group where he did management consulting for lots of businesses. After, in 1977 he was hired by Bain and Co., another consulting firm where he became vice-president a year later. Wow, that was fast… He worked there for 6 years and was the brightest and baddest motherfucker in town, dealing with senior clients like Monsanto and Corning Inc.
In 1984, Mitt was offered a chance to head an independent spin-off from Bain and Co., a private equity firm Bain Capital where Mitt would be the Boss. He actually declined the offer; viewing it as too risky, but accepted after he was reassured he’d get his old seat and pay if the venture failed. This is the first interesting event which begs for a critique.
Mitt isn’t the one to take risks. He is a very conservative, in an apolitical sense, character. He strives for sure and predictable deals. Something that a president has no control over. A president, most of the time, has no idea how his actions will affect the country or relations abroad, and most of the time you don’t have numbers or guarantees that shit won’t hit the fan. In my opinion, Romney is not a confident man, he may be smart and intelligent, but he’s not a risk taker and he won’t fight for his ideals or opinions, something that we will discuss further.
Bain Capital, with the initial capital of 37 million, focused on venture capital deals. And Romney, again vigilant and not a risk taker had to veto a lot of deals because of risks and weaknesses he saw. The firm overall had shitloads of success and profit, from its investments in companies such as Staples and Domino’s pizza.
Romney played a role of devil’s advocate in analyzing deals, and wasn’t actually successful with those he found himself. Again, he is the analyzer, not the risk taker. He also wanted to drop the Bain hedge fund, which initially was losing money, but other partners disagreed and later earned billions in profit.
Bain Capital isn’t a job creator, as some political pundits are trying to frame it. The firm dealt with leveraged buyouts, a practice of buying a company/business against a banks debt, improving it in a few years, then selling it off and earning profit, which of course, made a lot of people unemployed. Some might argue that successful investments created jobs, but those few successful ventures are nothing compared to hundreds Bain sold off for profit.
In 1993 Romney left Bain in pursuit of a political career. He ran against 6 term incumbent Ted Kennedy for a senator seat. He positioned himself to be a job creator, a business person and a moderate. As in this election, and the republican nomination of 2008, Romney was attacked for his shifting political views and business career which destroyed jobs. Romney has spent an overall 7 million on the campaign but ultimately lost with 41 against Kennedy’s 58 percent.
After his loss he returned to Bain but was pretty pissed he lost.
In 2002 he was offered a position to preside over the Winter Olympic Games. He happily accepted and made everything pretty good. This helped his public image enormously.
He ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. To appeal to the public, even after the success of the Olympics, Romney staged a series of events where he would work “blue collar” jobs such as shoveling cow shit and picking up trash. This guy is unbelievable. Yet, he won the election with 50 percent of the vote.
His most widely known achievement is a universal healthcare act, which made everyone in the state buy health insurance or face tax penalties. He also raised loads of tariffs and closed loopholes to take care of the rising deficits, which he was successful in. In the end, he had a 61 percent job approval rating from the state and was prominent enough to run for the president.
In 2007 he announced his bid for the Republican Nominee. To be honest, there’s nothing interesting about his bid. He did boring political stuff every fucking politician does; he made some dumbass jingoist claims in the debates as every Republican should do. And then he suspended his campaign because he wouldn’t win in a million years.
And here we are: 2012 presidential race. You’ve all probably read, heard and seen it by now. Trying to explain every mishap, every flip flop of Mitt’s is going to be impossible since there are too many. So what I’m going to do is to give my own opinion and analysis of his political character:
Mitt Romney is an apolitical person who will mold his views into something that will sell. I, for once, think it’s great that someone who isn’t ideologically fueled is aiming for the presidency, but at the same time, I’m terrified of it. Because Mitt Romney has no political compass or ideology to follow, he will do every horrible thing a lobbyist with enough money will ask, he will do anything a conservative nut job loud enough will shout. Because the current Republican Party has gone literally crazy over the past decade, Romney will morph himself into a crazy also, to appeal to his crowd.
That is a frightening prospect. He is a turncoat, a liar and a sleazy politician that will do everything to get into oval office. His record of flip flopping speaks for itself.
But thinking realistically, there has to be something dramatic and drastic enough to get him elected, because in a normal climate, he is going to fail as his father did.
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