OBAMA, JUST ANOTHER CHICAGO POL?

By GEOFFREY G. FISHER

July 2012

With the recent statement that Mitt Romney is a felon, President Obama’s 2008 cherry veneer has now separated and what remains is warped wood from a Chicago lumber yard.  Mitt Romney has been vetted so many times during his political life that he might as well be a Poster Boy for the Boy Scouts of America.  Yes, he is successful and wealthy (part of the American Dream), and yes he has sought to minimize his tax profile (just like every other American tax payer) but he is an exemplary family man and a pillar of his community.

The political slush coming out of Team Obama makes for a very poor Slurpee – the president already has a Bain Freeze of historic proportions.  Let’s look at the facts impartially as Challenger Romney prepares for his 2012 nomination:

      !. The Founder and former President of Bain Capital, a leading equity firm

      2. The managing hero of the Utah 2002 Winter Olympics

      3. The former tax-cutting governor of Massachusetts

Compare that record to Candidate Obama in July 2008:

1. Former Community Organizer
2. Civil Rights Attorney: 3 years
3. Adjunct Law Lecturer
4. Illinois state-Senator: 7 years
5. First term US Senator

This is how the venerable Dan Balz of the Washington Post handled this issue in October of 2006, just four months prior to Mr. Obama’s presidential announcement:

Party strategists said that, if voters are looking for change in 2008, Obama would symbolize it better than many of the other possible candidates. But having served just two years in the Senate and seven in the Illinois state Senate, Obama has a thin résumé upon which to build a presidential candidacy. (Balz continued) He was asked yesterday on "Meet the Press" whether he was ready to be president.  "I'm not sure anybody is ready to be president before they're president," he (Obama) told moderator Tim Russert

  

That self-serving statement summed up the situation perfectly.  Mr. Obama was more of a show horse than a work horse. 

The fact is, any American can run for president (after meeting basic requirements) and Mr. Obama won the 2008 election fair and square but it’s now clear he was not prepared to be president - his present criticism of Mitt Romney’s private sector experience is therefore a joke and a clumsy smoke screen.  The political pundits are now suggesting that Team Obama has decided to destroy Mr. Romney now because it may be too late after labor day with a worsening economy.  In other words, the president is going to throw everything at Mitt Romney now similar to the Germans throwing everything at the 82^nd Airborne and the 3^rd Army Corp in the Ardennes Forest during WWII.  If the president’s Battle of the Bulge fails so may his re-election bid. 

University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business economist Steven Kaplan has said "[Romney] came up with a model that was very successful and very innovative and that now everybody uses”.  That model - invest in companies you’re trying to turn around. 

Professor Kaplan also wrote in “The American” an online journal (January 19, 2012):

Fast forward to today. By the end of 2011, Staples had about 89,000 employees. Sports Authority is now a private company. The last time it reported employee numbers, in 2006, it had 14,300 employees. In addition, Gartner Group had over 4,400 and Steel Dynamics had over 6,000 employees. Using the most recently available data, these four companies alone employed almost 125,000 total employees… Overall, then, the companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.

Kaplan’s figures do not take into account other Romney success stories like Monsanto Company, Outboard Marine Corporation, Burlington Industries, Corning Incorporated, Brookstone, Domino's Pizza, Sealy Corporation, and Artisan Entertainment.  Nearly every American has patronized at least one of these American companies cited here.  No one can patronize an Obama company because there are none to patronize.

Mr. President, your 2008 election to the presidency only emphasizes that America is a fair and decent country – yes, a mixed-raced Harvard trained lawyer did become President of the United States, but sir, you’ve had your chance.  The American people believed that you might have risen to the challenge of the moment but with all due respect, you did not.  Run on your record and don’t insult our intelligence by criticizing a good man with a fine record in the private sector.  The American people deserve no less.

Words: 742

Geoffrey G. Fisher is a certified history teacher working in southwest Florida as a guest teacher.  He holds a BA in History from the University of Connecticut and a MA in Public Policy from Trinity College in Hartford, CT.  In addition to teaching he is a former elected official and speechwriter.  Mr. Fisher now writes the political blog: THE THINKING CAP at www.theamericanthinkingcap.blogspot.com.