In the past two weeks, after nine months of daily attacks on the President by ten or more republican candidates, who in the end went with their anti-climatic nominee, the Obama2012 campaign decided it was time to turn the tables of criticism and began with dissecting the "job creation" record of Willard Mittens Romney while he reigned as supreme leader at Bain Capital. As we all know, this was not unfamiliar criticism and most importantly, not considerably partisan; in fact this was criticism shared by the most conservative leaders of the Republican Party, such as, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and especially, Newt Gingrich, who's line of attacks during the South Carolina primary propelled Romney from a presumed 3 week plan to the nomination to a slow, drawn out, four month death-march to inevitability.
Since then, the tracks have been laid and the Obama-Romney trains are off and running to November. With only a few weeks into the general election race, President Obama made the logical approach to continue where Romney's republican challengers left off (causing crushing defeats for Romney in over a dozen states, including some general election swing states, such as Iowa, Missouri and Colorado), by continuing the narrative of Romney's questionable, yet central, approach of driving profits at Bain Capital. But little did the Obama2012 campaign realize of how soon the classical contiguous case amnesia was going to breakout within the herd that is republican and independent electorate.
As soon as the Obama2012 surrogates Cory Booker, Ed Randell, Bill Clinton, Duval Patrick and Harold Ford Jr went on t.v. to promote the traditional talking points (as any political campaign does) it is was made very clear that some how it was against the laws of nature to criticize private equity, and if you do, god be with you, because you will persecuted by the media (which we all forget is practically monopolized by the "holy private equity" firms). We we're being lectured about how we can't criticize "success", that somehow, if a company, like Bain Capital, made money, nobody has any right to question it, NO MATTER WHAT. Somehow, once money is made, questioning is how political wrong, that somehow you're anti-American for question a profit.
EXAMPLE: Remember in 2003-2004, when if you made any comment that appeared to be critical of George W. Bush, that somehow you were unpatriotic, Non-American or pro-terrorism? The same type of conservative lobotomy has reemerged, only this time: Profit = Patriotism, as oppose to 2003-2004 when: George W. Bush = Patriotism.
In all this time, since the Obama campaign has begun these "attacks" on Romney's leadership at Bain Capital, NOT ONCE has the President or any of his supporters have ever said, "Making money is evil, anti-American or unpatriotic"; heck, not even Bernie Sanders has ever made such an obscene statement. No one has proclaimed that making money is a bad thing; everyone likes making money.
But there's a difference between making money and the way someone makes money. There's ethical methods and unethical methods.
EXAMPLE: I cook an amazing steak. Seriously, its the best. I cook it with certain seasonings, minced garlic, etc. If you sat down to eat one my steaks, you would say, "Nate, this is the best steak I have ever eaten." But if I told you after you ate it that "I killed my mother, chopped her up and used her as the meat" you probably wouldn't have the same opinion of that "amazing" steak.
And that's the point President Obama and the Democrats are trying to make about Mitt Romney and his tenure at Bain Capital. It's one thing to help struggling companies; but it's entirely a different issue when you take a relativity healthy company, buy it, jack up the bills by purchasing other companies against the credit of that company, then lay off the workers because you can't afford to pay them because you spent their salary to buy other companies, then keep their pensions to use as cash and then, of course, take away their health insurance.
EXAMPLE: Remember in the movie, Goodfellas, when Paulie, Jimmy and Henry buy that night club and then "bust the joint out and light a match"? Bain Capital made their money practically the same exact way, just a bit more quietly.
For my own masochistic reasons, I'll sometimes listen to a few callers call in to the Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity and Levin's radio shows; and I must say, it's hilarious to hear middle class Americans (some of who admit that they're struggling) defend private equity firms as if its their birth-right, that they are somehow their means to bounce back, while not realizing that the reason they lost job or home or 401k is because of financial machines like private equity firms. When listening to these callers, you would think they were talking about their own kids or something. They were speaking with such ownership that they sounded as if the "equity" in these firms was somehow THEIR equity. They spoke with such anger about something that wasn't even theirs to have.
And that's the killer about the idea of the "American Dream"; everyone thinks that it will ultimately happen to them as well; that somehow if we criticize someone's success, it's also their [future] success that you are criticizing; that somehow you are compromising their destiny with your criticism. It's practically a "I'm gonna win the lottery" state of mind. Raising questions about what someone else perceives to be "success" is not wrong, its not unpatriotic, its not anti-American, its not anti-capitalism; its called "vetting."