President Romney, Part III

One of the things I tried to do in my piece in Portfolio is explain how Romney makes decisions, or at least did at Bain Capital. The private equity firm grew out of Bain & Company, the consulting firm at which Romney began his career and where he returned to stave off its bankruptcy. Bain Capital reflected its genesis. It was heavily analytical and relished long term relations with its clients. It has the highest carry rate of any of the PE firms and it's staff is the largest, reflecting its consulting approach. I liked that Romney likes to absorb a lot of data. I like too that he encourages a lot of debate around the table. The Bain Capital Review process was basically a no holds barred discussion about whether they should invest in a particular company. You could disparagingly call Romney the consultant in chief but I think that fails to give him his due.

The down side of all this is that he strikes me as craven enough to say somethings that are just this side of assinine. Double the size of Gitmo? Please. I'm sure neither the Pentagon nor the CIA wants that let alone the State Department which has had to explain our little detention facility for the past seven years. I respectfully believe that someone can go from being pro life to pro choice and vice versa. Dennis Kucinich used to be pro life and the lefties never question his bona fides. So I believe Mitt Romney sincerely when he says he's pro life. I find it harder to believe that it was invisible-to-the-eye embryonic stem cells that convinced him. Maybe I'm wrong but his explanation that the decision over whether to fund embryonic stem cell research made him pro life seems to strain credulity. I'm just guessing here but I suspect he was never that pro choice and the flip flop was less of one than it appears.

I also asked Romney about gay marriage. Something that didn't make it into the piece. I asked him if the data showed that gay marriage was not having an adverse efffect on heterosexual marriage would he still oppose it. He said he would. That's an honest answer but it's not a Bain one either. I respect someone who opposes gay marriage but the opponents should probably acknowledge at this point that the Massachusetts experience, thus far, shows no impact on heterosexual marriage. Mitt Romney's career has been about the data and in this case the data is less alarming that the former governor led Massachusetts to believe at the time.