People have started to learn some disturbing facts about likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney: He once worked for Bain Capital — which is what’s known as a private-sector business. Harmless as the term sounds, it’s much scarier once you understand how such outfits operate.
A private-sector business doesn’t even pretend to make decisions based on how to best help people or what creates the most jobs or even on what will most equally distribute income. It makes decisions based only on what creates a profit.
Yes, it’s frightening to think that something so mercenary even exists — even worse that someone who worked for something like that could actually become president. Of course, the only people who should lead our country and manage our economy are those who remain unsullied by the private sector’s for-profit mentality: career politicians.
Isn’t there something just so reassuring about a career politician? He has never worried about “profit” or “efficiency” or “success”; his every job has involved only helping people.
Look at President Obama. His first job was “community organizer.” Do you think that job made a profit for anybody? No way. Did it provide goods or services a consumer might want to pay for? No.
The purpose of a community organizer is . . . well, I’m still kind of vague on the specifics, but I’m pretty sure it’s about helping people. People who live in a community — a disorganized one.
The point is, while Obama was doing this, Romney was rubbing his hands together like Gollum, exclaiming, “Precious, precious money!” And to get that money, he worked hard to trim costs and do whatever else he could to make a business successful. If elected president, he might look on the economy with cold, cynical eyes that judge everything by how profitable it is — as opposed to Obama, who looks at the economy and says, “Yay, look at all this money I can take to help people!”
Also, Romney had to answer to investors — people who expected a return on their money. This made him very hesitant to spend money. That’s a completely different perspective from that of a career politician, who’s only ever spent the money of taxpayers — people who long ago learned never to expect any sort of return on their investment.
What if Romney brought that corrupt perspective to Washington and, instead of just helping people with tax money, worried about whether we could actually afford things?
No, we need to keep this for-profit mentality out of Washington. We need the government to be run by pure career politicians like Obama.
While others were managing businesses to create profit, Obama worked as a legislator, voting “yes,” “no” and, especially, “present,” which never profited anyone.
In fact, if Obama were put in charge of a business and pressured to make it profitable, he’d just stare back at us in confusion. He might even start crying. That’s how horrific he’d find that scenario. And it’s that innocence — that complete lack of basic economic knowledge — that he brings to leading our nation.
If we allowed Romney to bring his business sense to office, it would be horrific. He’d start slashing the government until it was lean and efficient and everything fit within the budget. What a cold and heartless way to look at government.
That won’t happen with Obama. There’s no chance he’ll let budgets or math be more important than helping people, because he’s never been corrupted by the knowledge of those concepts. He knows only two things: helping people and spending tax dollars. Any other knowledge would just slow him down.
Political satirist Frank J. Fleming’s e-book, “Obama: The Greatest President in the History of Everything,” is out from HarperCollins.