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In a bizarre if somewhat predictable development, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, a very prominent supporter of Mitt Romney’s candidacy and a possible running-mate, had this to say today:
Asked during a press conference here whether he thought Romney’s experience at Bain should be part of his “record,” McDonnell shook his head and said “No. No.”
Wait a minute. I thought Romney’s experience at Bain was precisely what Mitt’s been citing all along as his principal qualification to be president. He hardly ever mentions his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, since some evil genie stole into the State Capital and signed health care legislation while Romney was presumably off creating a job or stopping an abortion or something. So if we’re not looking at Bain, what are we supposed to look at?
“All of these attacks are things that happened after Mitt Romney left as the managing director of Bain — he left to run the Olympics, some of the best Olympics in history in 2002,” McDonnell said.
Oh, okay, the Olympics are what we’re supposed to judge Mitt on! That makes a lot of sense; organizing a bunch of athletic events is a whole lot like running a country. Better yet, the Summer Games this year will help reinforce the Romney message 24-7! When we see those scenes from London, we’ll all be instantly reminded of those exciting moments from Salt Lake City that we all remember so well. Except it was a lot colder. And there was snow.
I gotta ask, has any candidate for president ever had a resume that shrinks during the campaign instead of expanding? If so, I can’t much remember it.
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Lifelong Dem on July 13, 2012 12:09 PM:
So we're supposed to think about how Romney got a bailout from the U.S. Government to save the Salt Lake City Olympics?
shivas on July 13, 2012 12:15 PM:
Let's see if I have this straight. Mitt wasn't running Bain during its offshoring and fetus disposal ventures because he was busy running the Olympics. He also wasn't running Massachusetts when RomneyCare was being legislated because he was busy running Bain.
From this we must conclude that he wasn't running the Olympics because he was busy running Massachusetts.
Mimikatz on July 13, 2012 12:15 PM:
Perfect timing from Romneyland yet again, as it breaks that the US uniforms were outsourced to China. Outsourcing to China--wasn't that what Mitt did?
What the GOP seems to forget is that you can't beat something with nothing. People may be unhappy, may be frustrated with Obama, but Romney is really unlikeable and a terrible candidate. Even the nails ladies understand that.
T2 on July 13, 2012 12:18 PM:
the big story on the Olympics today is that our team is going to wear uniforms made in
! gasp ! China! Our Congress is taking time off today from solving our Jobs Problem to go berserk over Team USA's chinese sweat-shop made duds......maybe Mitt will weigh-in on this issue? nah, probably not.
zoobadger on July 13, 2012 12:22 PM:
Aside from the inherent weakness of the argument that "the company that I created didn't start ruining people's lives until I was working somewhere else" asking your average low information voter to grasp the chronology of Mitt's career is futile. And as they say in electoral politics, "if you're explaining, you're losing."
Also, could it be any more obvious that the old Democratic war-horses like James Carville, who argued that the Obama campaign had jumped the tracks when it started going after Bain, just don't grasp how it works nowadays.
Dannyboy on July 13, 2012 12:29 PM:
Watching the Olympics, I'll think of Romney whenever a gymnast fails to stick a landing and a boxer takes a punch.
james on July 13, 2012 12:29 PM:
Sorry. On this one I have to give Mr. Romney some credit. The 2002 Winter Games were in deep trouble due to mismanagement and corruption when Mr. Romney took over. They were held without any incidents I can recall and concluded successfully.
That said, the authority given to an executive in charge of a private event like the Olympic Games, or a privately held equity buyout, is very, very different from that given to the President of the United States. Mr. Romney will not get to hand-pick the board of directors of the United States Government -- the 535 US Senators and Representatives -- and order them to do his bidding. Mr. Romney's temperment is well-suited to the autocratic concentration of authority his business experience has demanded.
Voters, however, are citizens, not customers.
bleh on July 13, 2012 12:30 PM:
It isn't just his resume. The ENTIRE Romney campaign is about empty, Protean form, and nothing at all about substance. Look at his constantly shifting positions on everything, his unwillingness to engage the media directly, and his Rove-inspired deflection of any issue back to his opponent.
They say you can't beat something with nothing, but the Romney campaign is trying to do exactly that. They're taking no solid positions, presenting nothing specific that can be attacked, and instead running on ambiguous platitudes and imagery.
I see the logic -- it can't be a comparative election if there's nothing to compare with, and the fuzzier your position, the fewer people you might offend -- but I don't think it's a winner. If there's another economic crash, Obama loses, but he would lose in that case if his opponent were a washing machine. Otherwise, I think most voters will go for the "devil they know" rather than a shape-shifting mirage.
Bo on July 13, 2012 12:36 PM:
Oh, yes, let's reflect upon Mittens' role in the Salt Lake City Olympics shall we.
He took over a failing enterprise, soaked the Federal government for a bailout, socialized the losses and privatized the profits.
Hmmmm, why does his Olympics record sound so much like his Bain record?
This empty suit is a one-trick (dressage) pony. Stick a fork in him. He's done.
golack on July 13, 2012 12:46 PM:
the ad writes itself...
"I'm not responsible..."
SEC filing, president of Bain capitol
"I'm not responsible..."
SEC filing, CEO of Bain capitol
"I'm not responsible..."
SEC filing, sole owner of Bain capitol
"I'm not responsible..."
paid $100K a year for "Executive compensation"
"I'm not responsible..."
formed new partnerships...
"I'm not responsible..."
N.Wells on July 13, 2012 12:48 PM:
I bet that Romney is so far into lying and saying anything that sounds good* that part of his present problems with the truth probably stem from not being able to keep all his fibs straight. However, I don't know that the public will ever get excited over the Bain timeline problems: a lot of the controversy boils down to gray area where excuses can be made, such as when he lost interest vs when he formally gave up ownership, and when he stopped being morally responsible for Bain vs when he stopped being legally responsible. Nonetheless, his public pronouncements about leaving in 1999 conflict with documents Bain filed with the SEC. I am hoping that the SEC investigates: it is really bad if their institutional response to people apparently lying to them is "oh, well, that's life in the fast lane; try not to do it again." Romney's actions may be legit (owning and leaving a vastly rich company cannot be simple), but his only way out is to explain how his public statements are false, and having a candidate say that he lied is way worse that having the opponents say it.
*As outrageous examples of Romney's "say anything that sounds good" behavior:
Romney to gays: I'll be better than Ted Kennedy for gay rights
http://www.baywindows.com/romney-ill-be-better-than-ted-for-gay-rights-53688
Romney to the NAACP: "If you want a president who will make things better in the African-American community, you are looking at him."
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/OTUS/romney-says-he-expected-to-be-booed-at-naacp/story?id=16753886
c u n d gulag on July 13, 2012 12:54 PM:
Bo,
He's not done yet.
To the base right now, this is what matters.
He stood up to the NAACP, ACORN, and The New Black Panthers, and "Spoke Truth To Power!" - or some sh*t like that.
His biggest drawbacks are:
He's a Mormon.
He and his company outsourced jobs.
His company, with or without him in charge, disposed of dead fetuses (LIFE!), and parts.
His was the blueprint for Obamacare.
And he took Federal bail-out money for the Olympics.*
As long as the base can stay ignorant of all of that, he's male and white - so he's alright.
*This reminds me of an old Soviet joke.
Brezhnev flies his mother to Moscow for the first time, puts her up in his apartment for the night, then has his limo drive him to his Dacha, which is pretty sumptuous.
When his mother gets to his Dacha, she pulls him aside, and whispers, "Leonid, was that your car that picked me up at my cabin, and your plane that flew me to Moscow, and your limo that picked me up and took me to YOUR beautiful apartment in Moscow, and that same lime drove me here?"
"Yes, Mama," Brezhnev replies.
"And is this YOUR Dacha that we're staying at?"
"Yes, Mama," he again replies.
"What will you do if the Communists ever find out."
For Mitt, make that Dominionist Christian Evangelicals.
Marvin on July 13, 2012 12:57 PM:
Doesn't the fact that Mitt made it snow during his Olympic games make him the most qualified to deal with this climate change thingy?
Anonymous on July 13, 2012 1:00 PM:
And if we look carefully at the 2002 Olympics and the deals that were made for sponsorship, it just leads back to Bain, yet another reason that Mitt and Bain have to pretend he had nothing to do with Bain during that period.
http://thephoenix.com/Boston/news/45260-mitts-equity-army
Look at the companies that Bain invested in, like Staples, or on whose Board Mitt sat, like Marriott, and all the deals re: the Olympics. This is really a pretty tangled web. It seems there is nothing Mitt didn't try to turn to his advantage or make money off of.
berttheclock on July 13, 2012 1:12 PM:
Ah, the gold of those Olympic moments in SLC, where, many Republican politicos filled their pockets due to sweetheart land deals. Issa should be very envious
arkie on July 13, 2012 1:15 PM:
"So we're supposed to think about how Romney got a bailout from the U.S. Government to save the Salt Lake City Olympics?"
http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa092400b.htm
As recorded in the Congressional Record, Sen. McCain stated,
"The GAO now determines that $1.3 billion--and some of those I will read: $974,000 for the Utah State Olympic Public Safety Command; $5 million for the Utah Communications Agency Network; $3 million to Olympic Regional Development Authority, upgrades at Mt. Van Hoevenberg Sports Complex; $2.5 million, Salt Lake City Olympics bus facilities; $2.5 million, Salt Lake City Olympics regional park-and-ride lots; $500,000, Salt Lake City Olympics transit bus loan, and on and on; $925,000 to allow the Utah State Olympic Public Safety Command to continue to develop and support a public safety program for the 2002 Winter Olympics; $1 million for the 2002 Winter Olympics security training; $2.2 million for the Charleston Water Conservancy District, UT, to meet sewer infrastructure needs associated with the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. What the Olympic games supposedly hosted and funded by Salt Lake City, which began in corruption and bribery, has now turned into is an incredible pork-barrel project for Salt Lake City and its environs." -- Sen. John McCain in the United States Senate, Sept. 19, 2000 - [Page S8731-S8748 - Congressional Record.]
Skip on July 13, 2012 1:19 PM:
Like a greased chameleon, this guy.
In just a few days, Mitt's moved quickly from being a doofus flip-flopper to being a down-right ugly liar.
Someone should tell him his faces are falling off.
Countme-In on July 13, 2012 1:24 PM:
Germany won.
Ron Byers on July 13, 2012 1:25 PM:
james on July 13, 2012 12:29 PM:
Sorry. On this one I have to give Mr. Romney some credit. The 2002 Winter Games were in deep trouble due to mismanagement and corruption when Mr. Romney took over. They were held without any incidents I can recall and concluded successfully.
James, no one is denying that he took over the Olympics. It would seem, however, that like a lot of high powered executives, he is fully capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time. He now claims to have left Bain Capital when he took the Olympics gig, but the filings with the SEC tell a different story. So do his public utterances in 2002. At best he took a leave of absence from his day to day work at Bain, but that doesn't mean he gave up over all supervision until 2002, after a lot of the really crappy things done by Bain took place, things he doesn't want to admit. My guess is he approved overall strategy at Bain until around 2002.
hells littlest angel on July 13, 2012 1:26 PM:
Romney has released one year of his tax returns -- er, biography. That should be enough.
tcinaz on July 13, 2012 1:28 PM:
Yes, I really think Mitt won't want to talk much about how he saved the Olympics in Salt Lake City because then he'd have to deal with this: "By the time the Games were over, about $342 million in federal money to plan and stage the Winter Games had flowed into Utah, a record outlay for the Olympics and nearly $50 million more in constant dollars than was spent for the Atlanta Olympics, according to a report in 2001 by the Government Accountability Office." Another GM-like bailout by the too intrusive federal government which I'm sure he fought like a good Republican.
navamske on July 13, 2012 2:00 PM:
@bleh
"If there's another economic crash, Obama loses, but he would lose in that case if his opponent were a washing machine."
That's because the washing machine would know how to put the right spin on the economic collapse.
james on July 13, 2012 2:14 PM:
@Ron Byers. I trust you read my second paragraph, too. I do not object in any way to asking questions about any of Mr. Romney's record in either the public or private sector. I also think that being an executive in the private sector is very, very different from being an executive in the public sector.
I am aware of the, ahem, discrepancies about who Mr. Romney was working for during that time.
So here's a question I haven't seen addressed: Did the SLC Olympics pay him for his work there? Or did Bain Capital "donate" his time to the tune of, I don't know, $100,000 a year? I'd bet $10,000 that turns out to be the "explanation."
T-Rex on July 13, 2012 5:09 PM:
What I mainly remember about the Salt Lake City Olympics was the scandal about the outrageous rigged judging in the pairs figure skating competition. Was that Romney's fault? Of course not, but it happened on his watch, the same criterion that the GOP uses to blame Obama for every problem since 2008. Including -- no, make that ESPECIALLY, problems that the Republican Congress has deliberately created.
Sue Thompson on July 13, 2012 9:06 PM:
Romney took no salary for his work on the Olympics according to his biography and even donated $1M of his own money to the cause. Great but still doesn't explain why he received $100,000 each year from Bain. Everyday people and especially "the nail ladies" really won't understand that fact--who else gets paid that much and doesn't show up.
Anonymous on July 14, 2012 2:04 AM:
"...some of the best Olympics in history in 2002,” McDonnell said."
I take it Gov. McDonnell has forgotten the scandal of "the French judge" in the figure skating competition at the SLC games. And since Mitt speaks French... hmmmmmm...
And then there was the disqualification of the gold and silver medalists in one of the women's Nordic ski races for drug violations. This allowed the bronze medalist (who is Canadian) to win all three medals (she was first bumped up to silver with the DQ of the gold medalist, then bumped to gold after the DQ of the silver-to-gold medalist). Hey, wait, isn't French one of the official languages of Canada? HMMMMMMM...