I think the Obama team is beating up Romney for something that makes great headlines and might look bad to an unsophisticated voter. But to me this looks petty and cheap. I don’t like petty and cheap. I wish the Obama team would talk about important stuff instead of beating up a guy over nonsense.
Bain is being accused here of taking actions that are commonplace in private equity. So if it’s “legitimate to question whether those are the values America needs in a president,” then it’s apparently legitimate to question whether private equity is consistent with American values. Pretty sure that’s a broad brush masquerading as a razor blade.
Of course, Romney and Bain weren’t in the game to create jobs. They were in it to make money for their investors and themselves. Then again, the same would go for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Michael Dell, Warren Buffett, and just about every other successful entrepreneur and investor you could name. But that is the miracle of free-market capitalism. The pursuit of profits by creating value benefits the rest of society through higher incomes, more jobs, and better products and services. This isn’t “destructive creation”—like, say, crippling U.S. fossil fuel production before “clean energy” sources are viable—but “creative destruction” where innovation and efficiency sweep away the old and replace it with a more productive and wealthier society.
