President Romney, Part I

In the new issues of Conde Nast Portfolio, I have a column on Mitt Romney . The piece is about businessmen as presidents, our collective desire to have some CEO come in and run the country like a business. This desire has extended to Lee Iaccoca, Mike Bloomberg, Peter Ueberroth, Ross Perot and now to Mitt Romney, the founder of Bain Capital, an icon of what was (until maybe two weeks ago) the hottest industry of all, private equity. I spent time with Romney in Iowa and I spent weeks talking to people who worked with him. I was interested in how his business skills helped him in governance in Massachusetts and how he makes decisions. I liked some things I saw. He's analytical. He encourages debate and aides to bring him the bad news. I can't imagine Romney ever becoming as isolated as this president. The two went to Harvard Business School together, Republican scions on the Charles. Both carried their father's commercial and political ambitions in their DNA. Romney was as serious as Bush was a slacker--married, with kids while Bush was still partying. The Michigander went on to pick up a Harvard JD, too.

Still, much of what a president does isn't necessarily aided by business skills anyway. Romney was great at Bain at figuring out what companies to buy. On Beacon Hill, he was not as good at figuring out how to keep the legislature from overriding his vetoes. He may have been good at analysis, but a lot of people will question how he wound up opposing government funding of embryonic stem cell research.

I'll be curious to hear what you think of the article and I'll have more thoughts on the blog that didn't make it into the piece.