Come Bain or Shine

Three high profile Democrats have taken tepid issue with the Obama campaign’s criticism of Mitt Romney’s role as head of Bain Capital. Bill Clinton, former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. While much was made of this in the media, my feeling is that it will be of little consequence in the election, although as an admitted partisan I was temporarily nonplussed.   But after giving the matter some thought I’ve concluded that they have a point. The jobs for which Bain, the essential Mitt Romney, was hired for were to reorganize corporations. It’s reasonable to assume that many of them were in financial distress and that some would have gone under in any case. It’s also fair for Bain to expect remuneration, win or lose. A surgeon gets his fee regardless of the outcome of the surgery. If “Joe the Plumber” has his plumbing accreditation I think he’d charge for his time even if he was unable to fix the problem.   If a corporation was spending more on labor than Bain felt was necessary, it cut the payroll by firing workers. The same with outsourcing work. If it could be done cheaper in the Philippines so be it. Bain wasn’t the first to do this sort of thing, just one of the pioneers.* Business is business and It was doing what it was paid to do.     So much for objectivity! Let’s let our minds wander. George W. Bush may owe his two presidential elections to more people preferring to have a beer with him than his opponents. Maybe they identified with his less than perfect command of the English language. No matter how well a public executioner may have performed his job he might meet some resistance to becoming judge in a criminal court. No disrespect intended, but I think that “mortician” would not read well in the resume of a presidential aspirant.   In the companies Bain Capital turned around it was probably viewed favorably by many of the shareholders and undoubtedly by the executives. On the other hand the workers who lost their jobs might see it more as a gun for hire or hit man. The ultimate conclusion will be reached in November by potential voters who have yet to make up their minds.     *The Romney camp’s response was that a critical Washington Post article was “fundamentally flawed” because it didn’t differentiate between “domestic outsourcing versus offshoring nor versus work done overseas to support U.S. exports.” Now if they’d only have put it that way to the people who lost their jobs…