What Complete Nonsense from the New Republic

Walter Shapiro bills himself as an old time political reporter; his bio tells us that this is the ninth presidential election he is covering. Given that record, one would think that Shapiro could recognize a bit of reality in his articles. Alas, this is not the case. A good example comes in a piece from Shapiro today about the relevance of Mitt Romney's experience at Bain Capital. It is an amazing bit of sophistic rhetoric from Shapiro that basically discounts everything that Romney has ever done and then focuses on Bain Capital. According to Shapiro, Romney's time running Bain Capital tells all. As Shapiro puts it: "This is who Romney is -- a portrait in business success rather than selfless altruism." Oh, the horror of it all! While working in the business world, Romney was only a wild success in the business world. Romney, you see, did not run Bain Capital on the basis of selfless altruism. Romney actually did his job and made money for his investors.

There is so much wrong with this analysis that it is hard to know where to begin. Let's start with the comparison to Barack Obama. Obama was a lecturer at the University of Chicago. While there, he taught. He did not operate on the basis of selfless altruism; he did his job. Then Obama ran for the Illinois legislature and won. While there, Obama ducked all the difficult votes; he voted "present" rather than taking a position for the benefit of his constituents. That's right, Obama acted in these votes for the benefit of his own political future rather than acting on the basis of what was good for those who he represented. Then Obama ran for and was elected to the US Senate. While there, Obama spent nearly the entire time running for president. Issues came and went on the floor of the senate, but Obama was out slogging through Iowa or some other state seeking votes for his own personal benefit. So much for selfless altruism there. Finally, Obama got to be president. Even then, the idea of selfless altruism never crossed his mind except as a phony rhetorical device. Did he care about the poor and the jobless? No! Indeed, since passing the stimulus in February of 2009, Obama has done essentially nothing to promote job growth. He could have tried in a serious manner to pass other measures that might have helped. Instead, Obama made speeches containing proposals that had no chance of being passed. This was done to help his chances for re-election. In Obama's world, it is much more important to get re-elected than to actually help those without jobs or without hope. Indeed, Obama is about as far from selfless altruism as one can get.

Second, Shapiro must know after all these years that the point of being in business is to make profits. Shapiro, in his quasi Marxist world view, may not like that reality, but he cannot change it. It is hard to imagine that Shapiro could actually criticize Romney for being so successful at making money. Indeed, since Romney's efforts also resulted in major economic success for hundreds of thousands of others, it is a triumph of shortsightedness for Shapiro to lament Romney's successes.

I should not expect anthing better from a long time lib like Shapiro, but it still rankles me to see the nonsense that he puts forth being treated as if it had any merit. It does not.