Slate's Daniel Gross says former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney's corporate success "explains his campaign - and his flip-flops."
It's easy to conclude that Romney lacks core principles and will say or do anything to get elected. But I think there's something deeper at work. Romney's behavior - and the fact that he doesn't think his obvious flip-flopping should arouse suspicions - suggests that he may be the first real CEO/MBA candidate. Sure, President George W. Bush is the first president to have an MBA, and he made noises about running the country like a company. (Insert Enron joke here.) But in contrast to Bush, Romney was a real businessman before getting into politics. The Harvard MBA started at Bain & Company as a management consultant in 1978, founded BainCapital, a wildly successful venture-capital firm, and restructured the Salt Lake City Olympics effort. Romney would easily win a private poll among Republican-leaning executives - he's their kind of guy, socially and financially. Ebay CEO Meg Whitman is a big supporter. And smart establishment economists such as Greg Mankiw of Harvard, Columbia Business School Dean Glenn Hubbard, and John Cogan of Stanford, all of whom provided critical intellectual support for President Bush, have signed on.
So, how are Romney's flip-flops and business success connected? ...Such hypocrisy, which turns off voters, is something like a job requirement for CEOs.
In the executive suite, abandoning deeply held attitudes and reversing positions are job requirements. How often have you seen a CEO proclaim that a struggling unit is not for sale, only to put it on the block a few months later? A CEO will praise a product to the skies one day and then cancel it the next. He'll boast, sincerely, that his company is No. 1 in the industry and then, when he quits the next day to run a rival, claim that the new firm is tops. CEOs take their cues from Mike Damone of Fast Times at Ridgemont High: "Act like wherever you are, that's the place to be."
These business flips are fine, because in the corporate world, people don't confuse advocacy of a company's strategy or products and services with personal honor or integrity. Nobody expects Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott to wear suits made at Wal-Mart, or Sears Chairman Eddie Lampert to furnish his homes with appliances from Sears, or for the gazillionaires behind Triarc to eat lunch at Arby's.
Good CEOs don't simply stake out public positions and stick to them for 20 years. They devise new business strategies and business plans to cope with changing market conditions. Energy-company executives who are suddenly eager to do something about global warming aren't seen as hypocrites, they're seen as shrewd operators. If the world changes, you don't simply do and say the same thing. You bring in Bain & Company, commission a study, announce a restructuring, start manufacturing in China.
That last bit was a bit of a cheap shot, linking Romney with outsourcing to China. The piece continues...
It is clear that Romney approaches politics not as a crusade but as a business case study. He doesn't run in elections, he competes in markets. ... What's surprising is that the man who has usually been so competent is proving to be rather poor at execution, and timing. He's moving hard right at a time when the national mood seems to be swinging in the opposite direction
The piece ends noting that Romney currently polls in the single digits.
But here's where the writer gets it wrong. He assumes that because Romney is polling poorly now, he's stuck there. That would be like writing off Apple before they released the iPod and iTunes. I doubt John McCain or Rudy Giuliani - who have significant disconnects of their own with the marketplace - are writing off Romney now because he's in the single digits.
It's a long way to Iowa.
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