The case against Mitt Romney

With an election in two days away, just about everyone has made up their mind about who they'll vote for.  While the case for re-electing the President would take up a whole different post, I think one thing that's important to look at is the alternative.  The question isn't whether Barack Obama has been a great president, or whether he's lived up to the hopes a lot of people had for him in 2008 (which were unrealistic to start with), but whether we'll be better off with him in office than the alternative.  And I strongly believe that we will be.

There are a lot of different lines of attack that the Obama campaign has used against the Romney camp.  Some I've found persuasive.  Others, less so.  In all honesty, as far as the Republican primary candidates go, Romney was about as well as the Republican electorate could have done.  Unlike his rivals for the nomination, he's not some combination of stupid, crazy, and inept (or, really, all three; Newt Gingrich has a wildly undeserved reputation for being an "idea man"-- he counts if you include the caveat that all of his ideas are really really bad).  He's been a hugely effective manager in the past.  And he's surrounded himself with people who have, at some point, been very competent thinkers (though Glenn Hubbard, John Taylor and, to a lesser extent, Greg Mankiw have, at points, done their best to play dumb to advance "the cause").

As the Washington Post's very good blogger Ezra Klein notes, Romney is data-driven and analytical-- he's not a fire-breathing true believer like Gingrich or Paul Ryan, and he tends to change his mind about just about everything (which is how his Massachusetts health care reform went from being a model for the nation in 2007 to a government takeover of the economy in 2012).  Some people call that flip-flopping, and that's certainly a valid case when it comes to questions of values, but I'd argue that someone who doesn't change their mind if their views turn out to be wrong is dogmatic, not principled.  And I'd even believe that his choice of an ideologue for a running mate was a reflection not of Romney suddenly going nuts, but of him looking at the polls and figuring out that he needed to appeal to the hard right to have a chance in the election.

So I've argued that I think Romney is smart and competent and an effective problem-solver.  But I still think he's the wrong person to lead the country.  Here's why.  Being an effective problem solver is great.  But the presidency is less of a problem solving exercise than people like to think.  A whole lot of what the president does is set an agenda.  And setting that agenda requires someone who can figure out what the nation's problems are.  While Romney may be an especially competent manager, I also think he's almost uniquely out of touch from people's concerns.  And that's reflected pretty clearly when he speaks off the cuff.  From talking about 47% of the nation being "dependent on handouts" to talking offhand about how anyone can start a business by "getting a loan from their parents", Romney has a deeply warped view of the reality that most people face.

This view comes, in large part, from Romney's extraordinarily privileged background.  This recent piece in the New Republic from Noam Scheiber does a very good job getting to the heart of the Romneys' family mythology.  Mitt genuinely seems to believe that he earned everything he has from scratch.  And while he certainly deserves credit for building a hugely successful private equity firm, Romney is the quintessential example of someone who was born on third base but believes that he hit a homerun.  He was born to a chief executive who ran for president.  He attended an elite private high school in Michigan, had not just his college education, but also his joint JD/MBA from Harvard and all of his expenses paid for.  He certainly deserves credit for apparently giving away the rest of his inheritance and building his own fortune.  But he wants to ignore the advantages he was born with.  As children of the 1% go, Romney certainly did more on his own than most.  But that doesn't take away from the simple fact that, as a child of the 1%, he had opportunities most Americans can only dream of.

Scheiber's piece about Romney's son reflects a similar perspective.  Tagg Romney is convinced that he built a private equity firm from scratch.  The reality is that what Tagg Romney runs is a fund of funds-- while the elder Romney's Bain Capital is a traditional private equity firm that invests in and sometimes acquires companies, Tagg Romney's Solamere invests in other private equity firms.  While firms like Blackstone, KKR and Bain Capital sell expertise, Solamere sells access.  The average person, for instance, can't plant their money with these elite firms, no matter how much they might want to (and they would absolutely want to-- during Romney's tenure at Bain, the firm returned almost 90% annually to investors); the overhead required for these firms to take in investors who have $10,000 or $100,000 or even $1 million isn't worth the money.  So Solamere pools these smaller investors' money and places it with these bigger firms; the result is that investors who otherwise wouldn't be able to invest in KKR or Bain otherwise have a way to do so.  But this strategy rests on... Tagg Romney's connections.  Which come from his father.

So the best reason to vote against Mitt Romney that I can think of, more than him being the nominee of a reactionary, extremist party, is that he's running for president of an America that doesn't exist-- an America where struggling college grads who want to start a business can borrow from their parents.  Where "struggling" means selling off your inheritance after finishing a grad degree.  Where fantastic success is hard... but living comfortably is a default.  Governing the country Romney imagines, where people's biggest problem is a president who might hike their taxes or not appreciate them enough for their wealth, would be easy.  Governing the one we have is hard.  Because I think Barack Obama understands the country we have, I'll be casting my ballot for him on Tuesday.