Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement
Cutting Through The Bain Bamboozlement
Brian Beutler
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The reason this issue is in dispute at all is because Mitt Romney wants full political inoculation from anything Bain did between early 1999 and 2002, when he definitely truly left the company. He wasnt in charge, except in a narrow, technical sense; hed delegated his duties; Bains business practices from that period cant be hung around his neck.
If youre not already belly-laughing think about it this way.
For Romney to be truly off the hook politically for the stuff Bain was doing, hed have to claim not lack of control, but lack of knowledge. And thats just not going to wash with anyone. He could try going the I didnt have even the slightest idea what the company I technically still owned was doing route, but hed be marking himself as either dishonest or incompetent.
And yet thats really his only out. Just a guess, but if, hypothetically speaking, hed learned during the 1999-2002 stretch that Bain had made a practice of poisoning the water supply in a Midwestern factory town, hed have severed all ties, legal and otherwise, with the company.
But that didnt happen. More likely, Bain went on doing what it had always done, and with Romneys tacit stamp of approval. So he owns it.
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