“No Such Thing As Good Luck?: For Mitt Romney, His Entire Life Has Been A String Of Good Luck
Now that we’re having a real debate about the fundamentals of capitalism and success, it’s worth considering another part of the now-infamous “You didn’t build that” speech President Obama recently gave. When he was accused of taking Obama’s words out of context, Mitt Romney’s defense was that “The context is worse than the quote.” As evidence, he cited not the actual context of “You didn’t build that” but what Obama said a paragraph before, about the role of fortune in success. And it’s that idea—that success has to do not only with hard work and talent but also with luck—that really got Mitt Romney steamed. Here’s the passage in question:
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me — because they want to give something back. They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there
You might think that this would be hard to argue with, but as David Frum observed, many successful people find the idea that luck played a part in their success to be deeply offensive. And it makes me wonder whether Mitt Romney himself believes that the fact that his father was a wealthy industrialist and governor had nothing to do with his financial success. Does he think that if he been born to a poor single mother in backwoods Appalachia, he would have grown up to be the same private equity titan he turned out to be?
I’m guessing he does, but it would be interesting to hear what he said if someone asked him, “Governor, what role do you think luck played in your success? Do you think you had more of a chance to succeed because of who your parents were?”
Don’t know about you, but I’m happy to admit that luck played a large part in whatever success I’ve had. I was fortunate in my parents; we weren’t rich, but they valued education highly, created an environment with lots of opportunities for learning, and moved us to a town with excellent public schools. Had I been born in more deprived circumstances, I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have had anything like the opportunities I did, and I seriously doubt I would have pulled myself up by my bootstraps unless some other piece of luck fell my way. Luck played some part in getting most of the jobs I had, even if it was just knowing someone who knew someone who had an opening. I work hard enough, but I’m not such a jerk that I don’t understand how lucky I am to have a career as a writer, which is absurdly cushy compared to the jobs of people who stand on an assembly line or run around a distribution center or change bedpans. In my youth I had just enough exposure to a series of not-particularly-pleasant jobs like waiting tables and working a cash register in a supermarket to make me never forget how absurdly lucky I am to make a living doing what I do.
Mitt Romney is right about one thing: it’s hard to start and maintain a business. And it’s particularly hard if, unlike someone like Mitt Romney, you can’t live off your stocks when you do it. So I understand why some business owners would get their backs up when Romney tells them that Barack Obama told them they didn’t actually build their business. I’d hope they’d take the time to figure out that Romney is actually lying to them about that, but what can you do. But what I struggle to understand is the rich guy who thinks that luck played absolutely no part in him getting where he is. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t hear that coming from a guy who built up a construction business from the ground up. People like that have usually had exposure to enough bad luck to know good luck when they see it. It’s only the people whose entire lives have been nothing but a string of good luck who so angrily assert that there’s no such thing. It’s the Wall Street tools who got six-figure jobs in their uncle’s firm fresh out of Wharton who insist so vehemently that everything they have is because of their own talents. Only if you think that could you genuinely believe that an increase in your income tax of a few points constitutes some kind of communist attack on success.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, July 30, 2012
“Preserving Political Viability”: Learning “How To Be An American” Capitalist, Non-Sununu Style
The first indicators came during the Republican primaries, when former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry attacked Bain Capital-style capitalism. Perry even branded onetime Bain CEO Mitt Romney a vulture capitalist. The season has moved on — in fact, Perry campaigned for Romney last week in Elk City, Nev. – and the rhetoric has subsided.
But the reality is turning out to be quite problematic for Romney. Some kinds of free enterprise – such as a small family business – are perfect resume entries for a political candidate. But certain kinds of high-flying capitalism come across as cold-blooded and indecipherable, and they’re vulnerable to attack. Anything that involves the phrase “creative destruction,” for instance, would be risky.
What Romney is going through now is an experience neither major party may want to repeat. So if you are interested in running for president, here’s how to preserve your future viability:
1. Get rich the old-fashioned way. Create a product or service or business. Write a best-seller, like President Obama did. Run a successful company, like Herman Cain did. Jump on a trend early, like Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, who saw the potential of cell phones.
2. When you file your tax returns, imagine they will be on the homepages of every website in the world. Be prepared to defend your low tax rate and explain how you’ve used your untaxed money to create jobs. Alternatively, say you’d like to change the tax code so people like you pay more.
3. Related: Keep your money in the United States. Do not shelter income in Switzerland, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands or anywhere else. Repeat: keep the money at home.
4. If you have a lot of money, give away a lot of money. Think Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. If you have enough excess cash, you might be able to help eradicate AIDS or revolutionize inner city education. Tithing to your church and creating trusts for your kids don’t count.
5. When you leave a position, leave the position. Make a clean break. If you don’t, you will have a hard time arguing you are not responsible for what happened after you kinda-sorta departed, but were still CEO and sole owner. Sure, you may not be able to claim credit for good things that happen after you’re gone. But you won’t be on the hook for developments that are politically unpalatable, and possibly a serious threat to your presidential hopes.
By: Jill Lawrence, The National Journal, July 16, 2012
“You Want To See Big Government”: The Insanity Of The Socialism Talk
Kevin Drum notes today that all the overheated Republican rhetoric about the president’s tax proposal, suggesting capitalism is on the very edge of disappearing, is a bout of hysteria over a relatively small amount of money for the wealthy:
I just want everyone to be absolutely clear on what this “narrative of aggrievement” is all about. It’s about Obama’s proposal that the marginal tax rate on income over $400,000 should rise from 35% to 39.6%.
That’s your aggrievement. That’s your entitlement. That’s your socialism. That’s your class warfare. An increase in the top marginal tax rate of 4.6 percentage points.
Four. Point. Six.
This is what America’s most prosperous citizens are up in arms about. This is why Barack Obama is an enemy of capitalism. These are the spiteful shackles he proposes to use to subjugate America’s engines of job creation. It’s the reason America’s wealthiest citizens are so frightened about the future of their country.
4.6 percentage points. Just let that sink in.
Add in the fact that Obama is simply trying to restore the top tax rate under which the most rapid accumulation of private wealth in human history–in the late 1990s–occurred, and the insanity of the “socialism” talk becomes especially apparent.
Look, folks, I’m not that old, and I can remember the time a Republican president unilaterally created a policy that was vastly more disruptive of the private-sector economy than anything Barack Obama has even dreamed of: Richard Nixon’s imposition of wage and price controls in 1971. Top tax rates were much higher then, too. Somehow or other, liberty survived.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, July 13, 2012
“Why Bain Is Back”: The Folks On The Receiving End Of Capitalism’s Creative Destruction
A month ago, conventional wisdom had it that the Bain attacks on Mitt Romney were somehow failing terribly — notwithstanding the fact that they’ve been key parts of every other campaign Democrats and Republicans have run against Romney going all the way back to 1994. And yet all of a sudden, the Obama campaign is going full outsource/Bain attack on Romney at every opportunity. So they think it’s working great. New polling suggests they may be on to something. And in the most telling development, in the days leading up to the surprise Supreme Court ruling, the Romney campaign itself is mounting a mammoth pushback, signaling more clearly than anything that they think it’s working too.
So what happened?
Consider three basic factors. First, round one of the Bain Wars was almost entirely hashed out in what you might call the Acela corridor — an insular community, overwhelmingly affluent and educated, and decidedly not the audience for the message or the folks who find themselves on the receiving end of capitalism’s creative destruction.
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) visited TPM’s DC offices last week as part of our Newsmaker interview series and said basically: trust me, this message worked in Ohio. Maybe he was right all along. I suspect he was.
But there was another rhetorical dimension. ‘Private equity’ is a weird phrase. Most people have no idea what it does or doesn’t mean. And the Romney campaign through it’s surrogates was able to hit its opponents with something like ‘Hey, it’s poor form to be going all Nation magaziney and pretending that private equity isn’t awesome!’
And within that community, it worked. Thus Cory Booker, Bill Clinton, and a lot of other Democrats. ‘Private equity’ means a lot of different things. My own sense is that some parts of it are incredibly destructive while others create efficient allocations of capital. But who cares what I think? Wherever you come down on that question there’s simply no question that private equity is at the tip of the the spear of creative destruction in our society. So in a country where everybody gets to vote, it’s sort of crazy to think criticizing something like that would somehow be beyond the pale like attacking the Pope or crapping on motherhood and apple pie. But there it was.
‘Outsourcing’ though and ‘Offshoring’ — these are just more graspable words, more concrete concepts. Everybody understands them. Everybody knows what they mean. I’m pretty sure the Romney campaign wants to say something like, ‘C’mon, our whole economy today is based on stuff like this and we all know it and everybody accepts it so don’t pretend otherwise.’ But they can’t. And what really got them all boxed up was when they got themselves into this ridiculous debate over whether Mitt’s an ‘outsourcer’ or an ‘offershorer’. As I said Monday, that’s an argument you lose by winning. Or lose by losing. Whichever way, you lose.
Even really smart strategists manage sometimes to charge into a brown paper bag like this. But this was a bad move because it opened Romney up to that most lethal political weapons: ridicule and mockery. The Obama camp seemed to get this early and just decided to drive a freight train right through him. Holding out for this distinction seemed incredibly stupid and more than that wildly out of touch since the difference is basically immaterial to people who lose their jobs as a result of it. And, as always, weakness which invites attacks.
In a country afflicted for decades by loss of high-paying manufacturing jobs and chronically stagnant working class and middle class wages it’s crazy to think that Romney’s history as a private equity king — especially one working the lower tiers of the private equity world — wouldn’t be a liability for a lot of voters. But it was something that DC reporters were best positioned to miss.
By: Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, July 2, 2012
“Delivering For The Well-To-Do”: Romney’s Bain Experience Wasn’t Real American Capitalism
The debate is on. The Obama forces and the Mitt Romney campaign are dueling back and forth with ads and heated rhetoric about Romney’s record at Bain Capital.
Actually, this debate began during the Republican primary season, when Romney was eviscerated by his probusiness foes vying for the nomination. Rick Perry called the Bain approach to business “indefensible,” “inherently wrong,” “vulture capitalism,” and Newt Gingrich called it “exploitation.” So, those who are worried that the critique of Romney’s role as a corporate raider is somehow a criticism of American capitalism or is somehow antibusiness should play back the Republican primary debate tapes.
Here are the fundamental questions about Romney and Bain: Did they help middle class, working families; did they create hundreds of thousands of jobs in America; was this American business at its best?
The answer, in my view, is clearly no. This is not George Romney running American Motors, this is not Steve Jobs creating Apple, this is not Ray Kroc developing McDonald’s. This is Wall Street run amok, with little regard for jobs lost, pensions lost, debt piled up, lives and communities left in tatters. The sole purpose of Bain Capital was to make money, and lots of it, for themselves and their investors. It was not to rebuild companies and rebuild lives. It had nothing to do with job creation.
If this is the Romney business “experience”—thanks, but no thanks.
The scary part of the Bain experience is that we have a candidate who favors $5 trillion in tax breaks, mostly for the wealthy, while unfairly targeting middle class families. The budget and tax policies advocated by Romney and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin are inherently unfair to working families and continue the shift in income and benefits to those who have prospered this past decade.
In short, the Romney platform and the Romney experience at Bain point to a potential president who delivers for the well-to-do, not those who have been hurt by the economic collapse.
So, why does Romney favor, for himself and his wealthy friends, tax breaks to put money in Swiss bank accounts and the Cayman Islands? Why does he support carried interest deductions for the wealthiest Americans that allow him to only pay 14 percent in taxes? Why will he not admit that just because he can afford the lawyers and fancy accountants does not make it right?
Romney’s problem is that he is not supportive enough of real, fair, honest American capitalism—he is too tied to fast and loose Wall Street “exploitation” that got us all into this economic mess in the first place.
One can argue strongly that these money-making tactics have done far more harm than good to our economy and to American businesses over the past 20 years. That is why Bain and Wall Street excesses are so important to main street voters. That is why this debate about America’s future course is so important this election year.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, May 26, 2012
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