2012 Tuesday: Obama wants the election to be about a topic he doesn’t understand
In Chicago yesterday, President Obama described the essence of his campaign against Mitt Romney. Asked during a press conference about his campaign ads criticizing Romney’s record at Bain Capital in the 1980s and ’90s, Obama disagreed with fellow Democrats’ advice to focus on other issues:
[T]his is not a distraction. This is what this campaign is going to be about — is what is a strategy for us to move this country forward in a way where everybody can succeed?
Well, now. That’s just completely different from every other presidential campaign in history…
Some commentary has focused on what Obama said just before that: his description of the job of president vs. the job of a private equity CEO. And with good reason. There is plenty to address: from his assertion that the president should be involved in helping individual communities plan their economic development, to the obvious conclusion that the job, as he’s described it, is not one he’s done particularly well given the persistent sluggishness of the job market and the economy more broadly.
But what interested me was his summary of private equity:
Now, I think my view of private equity is that it is set up to maximize profits. And that’s a healthy part of the free market. That’s part of the role of a lot of business people. That’s not unique to private equity. And as I think my representatives have said repeatedly, and I will say today, I think there are folks who do good work in that area. And there are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries, but understand that their priority is to maximize profits. And that’s not always going to be good for communities or businesses or workers.
Contra Cory Booker, Harold Ford Jr. and Steve Rattner — who are among the Obama supporters who cautioned him against demonizing private equity — the best reason for Obama to avoid the topic is that he sounds wholly uncomfortable on such foreign terrain.
His dissection of the place of profits in an economy supposedly based on free enterprise comes off like the remarks of an anthropologist recently returned from spending a year among some exotic, savage tribe. But profitability is a concept that comes naturally to most Americans because, unlike Obama, most of us have worked for for-profit enterprises.
Instead, Obama says “maximize profits” as if it’s one element among many when it comes to business (it’s just “part of the role of a lot of business people,” with the others ostensibly at liberty to ignore revenues and expenses), as if he grudgingly acknowledges some possibility that profits can co-exist with a healthy economy.
Wrong. Profits are indispensable to a healthy economy.
If a company is not trying to “maximize profits,” it is not a) trying to satisfy the most customers and thereby earn their business; b) recruiting and retaining the work force needed to deliver appealing products or services; or c) creating or freeing up the capital needed to expand its business.
Oh, and because we know Obama puts a premium on higher tax revenues: “Maximized profits” also mean more earnings for government to tax.
This is the story of America’s economic power. We are not the world’s most important economy, and the most prosperous people, because there are business people for whom “maximizing profits” is not “part of their role.” On the contrary. It’s because the profit motive — and, importantly, the greater freedom from government that our enterprises historically have had to pursue it — has ensured we have gotten the most out of our scarce resources.
Profits are not something to be merely tolerated as long as everything turns out OK for everyone else. They are the best motivation known to man to put as many people and resources as possible to productive work.
And creating new industries, with new jobs, is not incidental to free enterprise. Delivering novel products or services is not the only way to make money, but it is a time-tested way to do so.
This also happens to be the story of Bain Capital. Yes, it invested in businesses that couldn’t be turned around — that is, made profitable — and which had to be closed. But it also found great success in other ventures, some of which still employ tens of thousands of Americans.
Obama wants you to think the exceptions are the rule, at least where Romney and Bain are concerned. In doing so, he betrays his lack of familiarity with the very economy he claims to be trying to shepherd.
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
440 comments Add your comment
md
May 22nd, 2012
11:26 pm
“What are you stooges going to do when Obama wins another term?”
Very well may happen…..but odds are Congress may go all R…..so Obama is essentially neutered.
md
May 22nd, 2012
11:43 pm
jdw…..the bondholders got hosed…..no if’s and’s or but’s……so spin it any way that makes you feel good about yourself.
“The revised offer to the holders of $27 billion in unsecured GM bonds amounted to a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum: Go along with what the government auto task force’s proposal or be left holding the assets a new GM doesn’t want _ ones with presumably little value at all.”
“The committee said it would go along with the new deal, but it was still unfair.
“While the committee continues to remain troubled by preferential treatment that the UAW VEBA is receiving compared to the bondholder class _ rejecting this offer in the expectation that the bondholders will do better in a litigated outcome was a risk the committee is unwilling to take,” the committee said in a statement.”
DAVETV
May 23rd, 2012
12:15 am
Here’s an interesting article on the GM bail-out.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/20/gms-pathetic-stock-price-and-the-30-billion-taxpayer-tab
My take on it is that because we propped up GM, that stole the opportunity for other car companies to take over that market share. Do you think people wouldn’t buy any more cars unless they could get a GM product? Other car companies would get to step up and fill that demand. They would get to make more cars. They would have to hire more workers. Expand or build factories. Perhaps companies who know how to run a business successfully should be the ones who benefit. Instead, we penalize success and reward failure. On what economic model is that policy based?
Mr. Rob B
May 23rd, 2012
12:26 am
Obama has now explicitly revealed that he really doesn’t understand what it means to be president. A president’s job is DEFINITELY to maximize profits: the profits of the American people. Obama has now revealed his weakness-he not only doesn’t understand the business and the economy-he does not understand what a president’s job is supposed to be. Let’s stop electing people like Obama who are are novices when it comes to leadership.
getalife
May 23rd, 2012
12:50 am
He wants all Americans to have a chance to make a living compared to the gop that just want the wealthy to control all the wealth.
bain is fair game cons so stop crying about it.
Ray
May 23rd, 2012
3:57 am
And, Republicans error in saying the wealthiest of us are the “job creators”. Customers create business, and the more customers you have, the better the chances are that you will decide to hire more folks, despite the current tax rates or what you think they might be next year. The biggest investment group we have in this country are 401k savers. They have no idea what their ultimate tax rate is going to be, and they certainly get no special capital gains tax breaks, as all of their withdrawals will be taxed as ordinary income, yet they continue to invest, no matter what party is in office; in fact, 401k balances just recently reach an all time high.
Jack
May 23rd, 2012
6:00 am
Obama likely skipped over accounting while in school. If you can’t make a profit, you need to be working for the government.
Lil' Barry Bailout (Unexpectedly Revised Downward)
May 23rd, 2012
6:30 am
Obozo’s presidency and his current campaign is no more thoughtful or meaningful than most of the libtard posts here. Just so many lies, distortions, snarkiness, and distractions.
He truly is an amateur.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Amateur-Edward-Klein/dp/1596987855/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337768971&sr=8-1
#Occupy my desk...
May 23rd, 2012
6:44 am
http://www.ajc.com/news/dekalb/dekalb-schools-draft-spending-1443910.html
but wait, I thought the recession was over and Obama had saved us, the auto industry and orphans from a burning building, yet this article says my taxes need to go up another 25% over last years 25% increase because the economy “is still just that bad.” I thought he fixed it!?! Could that have been a bunch of lies?
@@
May 23rd, 2012
7:27 am
People need a paycheck to become customers.
Willis
May 23rd, 2012
7:35 am
Romney didn’t get $250,000,000 by creating jobs. He got $250,000,000 by destroying jobs. Wingfield, where do you think that money came from? He didn’t stand with a bucket on the sidewalk taking coins, that’s for sure.
Don Abernethy
May 23rd, 2012
7:46 am
Whether you like Romney or not the fact is that he does have years of business experience. Obama has NO business experience. Who would you want to manage your money??????
rwcole
May 23rd, 2012
7:47 am
Romney’s “job” was to buy a business and fire people. Fewer salaries to pay looks like more revenue. Borrow against the company. Bankrupt the company. Sell off the pieces. Pocket millions while hundreds of Americans lose their jobs. And Kyle is his cheerleader. Conservative? I think not.
GT
May 23rd, 2012
7:54 am
Romney brought the subject front and center. Romney said he had created 100,000 jobs and left it at that. You would have to look hard to realize Romney was every governor of the state of Mass. The misdirection is calculated.
If it is raining outside and a neighbor insist it is sun shining, somewhere in that conversation it is not rude to point out it is very wet outside.
The polls in the country favor small business, somewhere in the 90%s. They do not like too big to fail and have unfavorable rating for any category Romney’s private occupation falls in. Romney got a taste of that in Michigan and will get a lot more of it as his campaign progresses. It is who can get a message out and once Romney is striped of his superpacs and has to stand on a stage with O these points Obama is making now will resonate to the American people. It is like tainting a jury pool before a big trail. When the debates begin the swing voters will go, “so that is what he was talking about Romney.” Worked for Newt in SC and Ga. O won’t run out of money and his character is far above that of Newt’s,
BB
May 23rd, 2012
7:55 am
“Customers create business, and the more customers you have, the better the chances are that you will decide to hire more folks”
The “you” in that sentence is a business owner. I wish we could get off the whole “creator”, “destroyer” business. Business owners do hire people when business is good and taxes do matter to them.
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
8:02 am
The Grand Poobah/Head FlipFlop now backing away from the Bain issue.
LOL…another pig in a poke.
JDW
May 23rd, 2012
8:07 am
@Tirberius..”What part of “they were all scared away” do you NOT understand, JDW?”
Apparently you do believe in ghosts…or are so consumed with angst you can’t function. Apparitions cannot be “scared away”. Do some research, find one interested party. In any merger/takeover if you can’t make a list of 10-12 suitors you have a problem. There was not a single one.
MarkV
May 23rd, 2012
8:19 am
“A president’s job is DEFINITELY to maximize profits: the profits of the American people.”
A person who has written that stupidity wants to criticize the President?
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
8:19 am
“Apparitions cannot be “scared away”.”
But investors can.
GT
May 23rd, 2012
8:26 am
We are washed with Madison Avenue propaganda of how much better life is with big business. Mindless Americans follow the direction the wind of these ads lead them. How many times have I wanted to do a counter ad to Home Depot telling them the customer service they brag on is non existent or Verizon who sneaks into my billing over a few months and is a constant challenge to keep honest on overcharging me for things I didn’t order. Profit comes to a line of almost being criminal and I am sure in the too big to fail banks it has crossed that line as it has many other places the propaganda is steering us away from.
I don’t think our forefathers envisioned this, I don’t even think our fathers envisioned a Wall Street too complicated to regulate, an enemy too quick to take advantage of our weaknesses which is supervision. What amazes me is the “slow it down conservatives” are the catalyst of these card tricks. It is a way for a minority of thinkers to keep control of a quickly changing world because like our enemies these weaknesses in our system aid the GOP agenda. You got to keep an eye on people who think our country’s bad news is their good news. Wall Street calls it short selling.
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
8:29 am
Short selling. And how do you think the GODS you worship, the Kennedys, made their money? Papa Joe saw the crash coming and was short selling everything in site. But I guess when a liberal/democrat from Spam-alot does it, then its OK!!!
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
8:32 am
“A president’s job is DEFINITELY to maximize profits: the profits of the American people. A person who has written that stupidity wants to criticize the President?”
So that wouldnt be the Presidents Job? So you agree with the Grand Poobah squashing productivity, damning capitalism, encouraging welfare, setting goals in ObamaCare to increase the food stamp enrollment?
Good plan.
BB
May 23rd, 2012
8:38 am
For cryin out loud, now there’s a problem with shorting a stock. Good grief.
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
8:42 am
Short selling is necessary to maintain and orderly and competitive market. Perhaps before spewing sewage from your piehole some research, about the stock market in general, would be necessary.
jj
May 23rd, 2012
8:44 am
How is what Rattner and Obama did to GM any different than Bain?
Hundreds of dealerships CLOSED, multiple assembyl plants CLOSED, bond holders screwed when bankruptecy filed, 10’s of thousands unemployed………….all in order to save GM. Liberal=Good, Conservative=Bad
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
8:48 am
Perhaps Kyle should have entitled this piece, ‘Liberals whine about that which they cannot understand”.
Of course, he could use that title for almost anything he posts . . .
GT
May 23rd, 2012
8:54 am
I look at my country kind of like my family. If I find out a family member is in trouble do I try to economically take advantage for him or her? Do I rejoice when I hear bad news about my family member? You use to not even have to ask that question but somehow our lust and greed along with the help of misdirection of a right wing agenda calling itself religious has clouded our judgement.
Darwin
May 23rd, 2012
8:58 am
Republicans gave us the economy in 2008 that THEY know about.
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
8:59 am
I think its your lack of leadership within, your family, which you may want to make a focus. Dont pretend to give a helping hand when you have not the knowledge to do so.
Nothing but empty words coming from you and your family. But is certainly sounds nice. *a tear*.
LeeH1
May 23rd, 2012
9:01 am
The main point is that Mitt is white and Obama is not. Saying he is an alien, or that he doesn’t understand business, or he is a communist or Black Panther or whatever are just ways of saying the first item.
Mitt is white and Obama is not. Unless you discuss the issues, this is all you are saying.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
9:02 am
GT, I think your misguided sense of reality is getting the better of you.
Please post any comments about anyone “rejoining when they hear bad news” about this economy or this country.
You’re being brainwashed, son.
MarkV
May 23rd, 2012
9:04 am
iggy @8:32 am: “So that wouldnt be the Presidents Job? So you agree with the Grand Poobah squashing productivity, damning capitalism, encouraging welfare, setting goals in ObamaCare to increase the food stamp enrollment?”
More stupidity and lies.
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
9:05 am
LeeH1
May 23rd, 2012
9:01 am
Good point. So what you are saying is that Herman Cain and/or any other black person that votes for Romney is a racist.
Thanks for clearing up that matter!
PS…Im putting a gold star beside your name on the employee of the day calendar.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
9:05 am
Wow. The race card from such a deep thinker as LeeH1.
Of course, the actual issues and policies ARE being discussed, Lee.
Quite a bit more effectively than the lamestream media has covered, in fact.
TruthBe
May 23rd, 2012
9:07 am
Progressive Humanist: CAUTION Angry N e g r o Syndrome.
TruthBe
May 23rd, 2012
9:12 am
getalife
May 23rd, 2012
12:50 am
He wants all Americans to have a chance to make a living compared to the gop that just want the wealthy to control all the wealth.
bain is fair game cons so stop crying about it.
So is racist, radical, communist, Chicago Pay to Play Thug, corrupt career politician, Muslim brotherhood black panther want be Obama.
md
May 23rd, 2012
9:15 am
“Customers create business, and the more customers you have, the better the chances are that you will decide to hire more folks, despite the current tax rates or what you think they might be next year.”
Consumers are just people with money to spend without a product to spend it on. Did the consumer finance, develop, and produce the iphone? ipad? toilet paper?
The answer of course is no……there are 2 sides to the equation, but without products there is no consumer.
As for maximizing profits……of course that is the President’s job, for it is the private sector that must generate all the funds to not only run the private sector but to run the getting way to big government………….without those profits the entire system goes down.
@@
May 23rd, 2012
9:15 am
The main point is that Mitt is white and Obama is not.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
md
May 23rd, 2012
9:20 am
“I look at my country kind of like my family. If I find out a family member is in trouble do I try to economically take advantage for him or her?”
You may be the lucky one, but in my family we have a few deadbeats…..took us a few years to realize that enabling is the disease, not the cure. It isn’t called tough love for nothing, but the giving stopped years ago…….even in a family one gets tired of being used.
GT
May 23rd, 2012
9:21 am
How convinent of God and religion to allow so many of us to just wake up in the morning and whatever our mood is that day that becomes the religion we follow. A gay guy iritates me so now I find proof that is a sin, I like a glass of wine so did Jesus but not on Sunday. Hitler was a generation too soon he could have use these ad campaigns to cover a lot of his thinking and might even have gone to heaven with the right public relations company.
JDW
May 23rd, 2012
9:27 am
@Tiberius…”But investors can.”
Apparently you are under the incredible delusion that by stating something you immediately make it so…all empirical evidence to the contrary. You have bellowed on about these phantom investors for 2 days now and yet cannot name a single one. More importantly there is not a historical record of a single potential suitor.
Sorry, the Republican strategy repeating a falsehood enough times to have it believed simply doesn’t wash here.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
9:28 am
Looks like GT just took his first hit off the bong for the day . . .
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
9:28 am
GT. Heres a tip. Short sell Dell or get in a postition to do so. Then you might feed your family, enable the enablers and make a little cash. In doing so you might acheive the Messianic ascension you so desire.
Rafe Hollister
May 23rd, 2012
9:35 am
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/05/22/cbo-says-us-likely-to-fall-fiscal-cliff-if-bush-era-tax-cuts-allowed-to-expire/
Well the solution the libs have been touting for years turns out not to be so palatable. I guess maybe without the tax cuts we might be worse off than we are. Lib/Oblama solutions are the wrong, go figure. If they had the answers we wouldn’t be in the second longest economic recovery in history.
Tiberius - Banned from Bookman's and proud of it!
May 23rd, 2012
9:36 am
JDW, here is reality. You should try it sometime.
How long do you think GM was looking to government for a bailout? Weeks? Months? You think they didn’t know their economic model was in the crapper for more than a year? Given past bailouts, why shouldn’t they first look to government to bail them out?
Which they did.
Given that REALITY, who on the street is going to step up and take on government?
Nobody.
You can’t get to Step 3 until you do Steps 1 and 2. Nor do you need Step 3 if Step 1 satisfies your requirements. Step 1 was seeking a government bailout. Private suitors were Step 3, which was negated when Step 1’s course was undertaken.
I suggest you research the theory “Cause and Effect” a bit more closely.
GT
May 23rd, 2012
9:44 am
.And md what do your deadbeat relatives have to say about you?
We have a few of all kinds in my family, I’m from the south, makes for an interesting brew. The human condition effects all of us. I always enjoy the Prodigal Son and think at different times in my own life ,more less ,someone else’s, all those characters have been me. I still think some of my old relatives are surprised I am a grown man, even a grandfather.
When I talk about selling short, I am not talking about destructive natures, I am talking about a majority of America that have earnestly tried to make their way. Illness strikes or divorce or whatever. This is not a feel good moment where I am going to baptist the victim with tough love and go off rectifying my selfishness as wisdom instead of sorriness. Tough love is something you in your gut do not want to do but is good for the patient. Tough love too often to too many is an easy way to do nothing.
Rafe Hollister
May 23rd, 2012
9:45 am
JDW
Your name one investor seems lame to me. I know little about the GM bankruptcy, but can you name one investor that saved KMart. How did KMart get out of bankruptcy and acquire Sears in less than one year? Seems strange to me.
Why could Ford not have bought GM and kept it operational? Why could GM not survived a bankruptcy like KMart or Delta?
The Fresh Prince of Bill Ayers
May 23rd, 2012
9:46 am
getalife
May 23rd, 2012
12:50 am
He wants all Americans to have a chance to make a living compared to the gop that just want the wealthy to control all the wealth.
bain is fair game cons so stop crying about it.
Since jobs and healthcare are owed to you by the Gub’mint, perhaps O’numbnuts can buy you a car and a house too?
JDW
May 23rd, 2012
9:50 am
From Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein in The Post a few days ago….
“The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.”
Sounds like many of the bloggers here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/lets-just-say-it-the-republicans-are-the-problem/2012/04/27/gIQAxCVUlT_story.html
iggy
May 23rd, 2012
9:58 am
JDW
May 23rd, 2012
9:50 am
Seems liberal desparation has set in.