Letters to the Editor
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Truman (McCain) vs. Dewey (Romney) Redux
Unless there is a remarkable turn of events in Iraq, we are back to a presidential campaign whose core issue is likely to be, "It's the economy, stupid."
Mr. Romney's new worth is estimated to be somewhere between $180 to $250,000,000. And though his father was both a Governor (of Michigan) and the head guy of American Motors Coproration, Mitt Romney accumulated his great wealth largely through his own financial brilliance. Please note the word "financial."
Unlike his father, he did not run a company that actually produced something. His father's company built cars. Milt's company manipulated capital and did so very successfully. He was a master of Leveraged Buyouts (LBO) of other companies (which did produce products) wherein the assets of the company being "bought out" were used as the collateral by the purchasing company to secure hugh loans enabling them to buy their targets. Brilliant, for sure.
Now Mr. Romney is touting himself as the "businessman"-candidate who can rescue the econmy from its current woes.
The only problem is that the roots of the economy's current woes lie in the very same capital-manipulation economy that the candidate was so masterful in himself. There is not a whole lot of difference to securitzing subprime mortgages or devising Collateralize Bond Obligations, Derivatives, incredibly sophisticated credit swap arrangements and LBOs. They are ingenious inventions from ingenious minds like Mr. Romney's. And when things go right with them, unimaginable sums of money can be made.
But when things go wrong--as they are now--the rapidity of capital losses are surpassed only by their enormity in dollars. That's what the US economy is faced with today: Things are going wrong bigtime in the world of capital manipulation. And that's where Mr. Romney made his money, not by building bicycles or televisions.
McCain needs to shine light on the Romney "businessman" image and penetrate beyond that word into how Mr. Romney actually made all that dough. Nothing illegal, but hardly a guy who opened a corner nicknack shop and went on to grow it into Bloomindale's.
McCain needs to emphasize--as he already does--his down-hown, plain talking, common sense persona. In other words, he needs to be a 21st Century Harry Truman and paint Mr. Romney as a 21st Century Tom Dewey-Wall St.-aristocrat. Frankly, Mr. Romney does a pretty good job at that already.
[Disclaimer: I neither support nor oppose either of these candidates. I just like to write, and wish them both the best.]