David Bernstein thinks Mitt Romney’s “shadow years” at Bain Capital are an important story.
“First of all, there’s Romney’s ‘buck stops here’ problem; the buck never seems to stop with him. Everything bad that’s ever happened under him — especially involving Bain — he always blames on other people, and that just isn’t very Presidential. The shadow years look like that in a huge way.”
“It also reinforces the image of Romney as part of the specially insulated corporate overlord class, who get to manipulate the rules so that they always end up the winner… He apparently was able to make a lot of money (or at least, what seems like a lot of money to most people) for being president, owner, and investor in a company while actually being off in Utah doing a completely different full-time job.”
“And, of course, he was apparently freely signing off on anything required of the president and owner, without, apparently, feeling like that meant he actually had any responsibility for anything happening at the company. It looks like legal, regulatory, and fiduciary responsibilities don’t really mean anything to super-wealthy executive types — not like when regular people sign employment documents, or mortgage documents, and so on.”
