COMMENTARY | A USA Today/Gallup poll suggests that the Obama campaign’s attempt to take down Mitt Romney for his tenure as CEO of Bain Capital has been ineffective. The results should prove bone-chilling to the president and his people.
By a 63 to 29 percent margin, Americans believe that Romney’s business background would cause him to make good economic decisions. The Obama campaign has been spending millions in ads that depict Romney as a vulture capitalist, destroying companies and outsourcing jobs overseas. The poll results suggest that either most Americans do not believe what the ads say or they don’t care.
Romney may be the man for his times, someone whose experience and skill set best suit him to be president in troubled times. There have been two such presidents in the post World War II era.
In 1952, with a grinding war in Korea and discontent at home, Americans turned to the liberator of Europe, Dwight Eisenhower, to become president and fix things. To be sure, Ike was not the perfect president, but he did guide the country through some of the worst of the Cold War and managed to preserve the world from nuclear destruction and the United States from tyranny.
In 1980, with economic stagflation and chaos abroad, Americans turned to the sunny, solidly conservative Ronald Reagan. He not only cured the stagflation and brought back prosperity, but won the Cold War. Reagan was the true greatest president of the 20th century.
In 2012, the main focus of discontent, as in 1980, is the economy. The current president is seen as not only ineffective in solving the current economic malaise, but actually as being a cause of it. Romney, the man who fixed the Olympics and turned around many an ailing company, may well be the man for his times. The United States may be the ultimate case of an organization in crisis that needs a steady, smart hand to turn it around. Hence, the belief by most Americans that Romney the businessman may be just the man to do that.
Obama didn’t help himself with his unfortunate “You didn’t build that” remark, which did little but to allow Romney to retort, “Yes we did.” Obama’s attacks on Romney the businessman have been matched by his attacks on business itself. Both seem to have backfired.
