The last post laments the ridiculous hand-wringing over Romney's struggle to 'connect.' Romney and his team should have been doing more from the beginning highlighting his strengths rather than trying to convince us how conservative he is, his greatest strength being his problem-solving ability. Some of you may be familiar with the story you're about to hear, but bear with me anyway.
It happened in July of 1996, when the 14-year old daughter of a Bain Capital partner disappeared in New York City for 3 days. The parents had no clue where she was. So Romney stepped in. He closed down the entire firm and asked all 30 partners and employees to fly to New York to help find Gay’s daughter. Romney set up a command center at the LaGuardia Marriott and hired a private detective firm to assist with the search. He established a toll-free number for tips, coordinating the effort with the NYPD, and went through his Rolodex and called everyone Bain did business with in New York, asking them to help find his friend’s missing daughter. Romney’s accountants at Price Waterhouse Cooper put up posters on street poles, while cashiers at a pharmacy owned by Bain put fliers in the bag of every shopper. Romney and the other Bain employees scoured every part of New York and talked with everyone they could – prostitutes, drug addicts – anyone. Eventually a teenage boy, responding to a flier, asked if there was a reward, and then hung up abruptly. The NYPD traced the call to a home in New Jersey, where they found the girl in the basement, shivering and experiencing withdrawal symptoms from a massive ecstasy dose. Doctors later said the girl might not have survived another day. Romney’s former partner credits Mitt Romney with saving his daughter’s life, saying, ‘It was the most amazing thing, and I’ll never forget this to the day I die.’
Which brings us back to his strength, as quoted by Robert Gay, the father of this girl:
"Mitt Romney simply can’t help himself. He sees a problem, and his mind immediately sets to work solving it, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not-so-consciously. He doesn’t do it for self-aggrandizement or for personal gain. He does it because that’s just how he’s wired."
This is the Mitt Romney we should be hearing about. I'll take this guy any day over one who 'connects' with me and 'feels my pain.'
But what about Bain's stockholder's? What did they think of him shutting down the entire business for a couple of days to go off looking for a child of one of the employees? What does this say about his potential as a Commander In Chief? Will he shut down the government to go looking for a cabinet secretary's child who disappears during a drug stupor. I am not sure that this example makes me feel that Romney will "stay on target" with rolling back Obama's liberal agenda. Sounds pretty distractible to me.
ReplyDeleteThe example was intended to highlight that problem-solving instincts are in Romney's DNA. That is a characteristic of a roll-your-sleeves-up and get down to business kind of a leader, as opposed to the distant, won't-engage-with-the-opposition Golfer in Chief's approach.
ReplyDeleteAh, but Sally--you were saying nice things about Mitt...and that is verboten by the current crop of Masada Marchers of the Republican Party gleefully casting themselves into the political abyss...
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