Mitt Romney Can't Explain What He Learned from Firing People

I like to learn a fun fact every day, and today I learned TWO fun facts! One is that people still actually read Time, and two is that Romneybot 6000 doesn’t have a scripted response to questions about what he learned from Bain or how Bain in any way qualifies him to be the president of the Greatest Country on Earth. He does, however, know that he has two of the most important qualifications there are: he was born in the United States, and he knows exactly how many people you have to fire to make a businesses grow. From that commie liberal rag the New York Times:  

“I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution,” he recalled [some guy] saying, “that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birthplace of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.”

Mr. Romney did not endorse the idea, but he seemed to like it.

He liked it because "working in business," unlike, presumably, the kind of work that OTHER PEOPLE DO (*cough*Ann Romney*cough*) helps you understand exactly how you have to screw over workers in order to pursue an inflated bottom line for the suits at the top.

“You see, then he or she would understand that the policies they’re putting in place have to encourage small business, make it easier for business to grow.”

Also, he or she would know how to read a balance sheet, which is also essential to running the country. Via Time:  

Mark Halperin: …what specific skills or policies did you learn at Bain that would help you create an environment where jobs would be created?

Romney: Well that’s a bit of a question like saying, what have you learned in life that would help you lead? ... Twenty five years in business, including business with other nations, competing with companies across the world, has given me an understanding of what it is that makes America a good place to grow and add jobs, and why jobs leave America – why businesses decide to locate here, and why they decide to locate somewhere else. What outsourcing causes – what it’s caused by, rather. I understand, for instance, how to read a balance sheet....

See, Mitt  understands, for instance, how to read a balance sheet, which Obama could never understand primarily because balance sheets don't come with their own teleprompters. The finely-tuned skill of balance-sheet-reading totally qualifies him to be president, particularly since he learned how to read a balance sheet after working in the private sector for 25 years. How many of you can say both things — that you know how to read a balance sheet and that you worked in the private sector for 25 years?

Halperin: …There are a lot of people in America who know how to do that. What would make you qualify to be President – again, specific things you’ve learned, things you know, policies that grow out of your experience at Bain Capital that would lead toward job creation.

Romney: ... Let’s take energy, for instance. I understand that in some industries, the input cost of energy is a major factor in whether an industry is going to locate in the United States or go elsewhere. So, when at Bain Capital, we started a new steel company called Steel Dynamics in Indiana, the cost of energy was a very important factor to the success of that enterprise... My policy on energy is to take advantage of coal, oil, natural gas, as well as our renewables, and nuclear – make America the largest energy producer in the world. I think we can get there, in 10 or 15 years. That will bring back manufacturing of certain high energy intensive industries. It’ll bring back jobs. It’ll create a surprising economic revitalization of this country.

H-E-double-Hockey-Sticks, looks like Mitt and I finally agree on something! I will definitely be surprised in the event that he presides over an economic revitalization of this country, particularly if he’s using Steel Dynamics in Indiana to illustrate this point. Let the record show, however that Mitt welcomes, WELCOMES, scrutiny of his business record:

Halperin: But you welcome scrutiny of your business record, is that right?

Romney: Mark, what I can tell you is this... The President’s experience has been exclusively in politics and as a community organizer. Both of those are fine areas of endeavor, but right now we have an economy in trouble, and someone who spent their career in the economy is more suited to help fix the economy than someone who spent his life in politics and as a community organizer.

Obviously you’re only “in the economy” if you are presiding over layoffs and bankruptcies and reading balance sheets. The rest of us — community organizers in particular, really — are operating “outside the economy,” which only exists in the private sector. And the organization of communities that have been adversely affected by layoffs and bankruptcies and other private-sector activities can't help you understand how to fix the economy; you can only understand THAT if you're helping to destroy it and then reading balance sheets about how much money you made off it, and only THEN if you've done that for exactly three years. [ NYT / Time ]