Mitt Romney Mba

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For more than six years, we’ve had a depressing example of an M.B.A. president, but our commander in chief and Romney are very different, even though they were, weirdly, in the same Harvard B-school class. Indeed, Romney tweaks George W. Bush subtly but tellingly when he recalls the Republican scion. “I was living in Belmont with a wife and two kids and going home every night to be with them and do my homework.” He pauses for effect, then laughs and says, “George was at a different phase in his life.” I ask Romney if it’s fair to lump him and Bush together as M.B.A. presidents. Romney casts the query aside: “We’re all different.”

That’s true. Bush and Romney may have learned the same case method, but Dubya was a slacker and boozer while the teetotaling Romney was hyper­accomplished, earning not only an M.B.A. but also a law degree from Harvard. In 1984, while at Bain & Co., Romney was asked by Bill Bain, his mentor and the only boss he’s ever had, to start Bain Capital. While Bush was a mediocre oilman, Romney raised $37 million for Bain Capital’s first fund and built the startup into a firm that now has $40 billion under management.

The differences between Romney and Bush don’t end there. To grasp the deeper contrasts, you have to understand Bain’s culture. Bush is infamous for trusting his gut; Romney is always analytical—the hallmark of the Bain approach to both consulting and private equity. To this day, Romney likes his information “voluminous,” says his campaign manager and gubernatorial chief of staff, Beth Myers. Romney might be a congenial panderer, but he isn’t someone who would look into Vladimir Putin’s soul and pronounce him a friend.

Analysis and debate—these defined Romney’s style at Bain Capital, where he would get together with other pioneers who had made the leap from Bain & Co. Over bagels, they would scrutinize business plans from companies that wanted their cash. “We didn’t know anything about venture capital or hedge funds,” says Eric Kriss, a Bain alumnus and blues pianist who served in Governor Romney’s cabinet. “We knew consulting.” Mark Nunnelly, a Bain managing director, recalls Romney’s collegial style: “You didn’t work for Mitt but with him.”

Even today, Bain Capital’s operations reflect the company’s genesis in consulting. Glenn Hutchins, the titan of Silver Lake, another private equity firm, says he has long admired Romney, calling him an innovator for bringing to private equity the Bain & Co. approach—analyzing a business’s practices, “breaking them into their underlying economic models, and reconstructing the business with a bottom-up analysis.” Hutchins, a Hillary Clinton supporter, doesn’t agree with Romney’s politics but calls him “the real deal.”

Under Romney, Bain Capital provided crucial funding for the Sports Authority and Domino’s Pizza as well as Staples, a deal Romney is especially proud of. In 1984, Staples founder Tom Stemberg went to Romney for financing, showing him data indicating that businesses were spending far more on mundane office supplies than they had calculated. Romney and his team did their own analyses of at least 60 other companies, getting granular with pen and paper-clip budgets before deciding to invest. Today, Stemberg credits Romney with providing the crucial cash that made Staples a category killer. “He saw things others didn’t,” Stemberg says. At times, though, Bain is a political burden for Romney. In 1994, Ted ­Kennedy defeated him when he challenged Kennedy for his U.S. Senate seat, charging that Bain cut good jobs when it took over businesses.

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