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Romney takes aim with his troubleshooter credentials
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Business English: Romney takes aim with his troubleshooter credentials
The Republican presidential hopeful pouts his business record ahead of his political experience.From founding Bain Capital, the private-equity company, to rescuing the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City from bankruptcy, Mitt Romney has no shortage of management success stories to boast about.
But when the Republican presidential hopeful recently addressed a campaign event in Marshalltown, Iowa, he chose to highlight a more obscure item on his curriculum vitae.
Mr Romney recalled how, as a young management consultant in the 1980s, he helped improve performance at Fisher Controls, a large industrial equipment manufacturer based in Marshalltown. He used the story to charm locals with memories of his visits to Rube's, a popular steakhouse where customers grill their own meat.
The real purpose, however, was to give an Iowa spin to Mr Romney's greatest qualities as a candidate: his decades of management experience and his remoteness from the grubby world of Washington politics.
"I didn't imagine when I was working in Marshalltown 25 years ago that I would ever run for president," he told the 200-strong audience. "I've always been a Republican but I'm not a lifelong politician."
Mr Romney hopes that his private-sector background will help propel him to the Republican nomination and ultimately the presidency at a time when public dissatisfaction with US politicians is at record levels and pessimism about the economy is mounting.
"The campaign theme is his record of stepping into difficult management situations and turning them into successes," says Cary Covington, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. "He did it with the Salt Lake City Olympics. He did it as governor of Massachusetts. The implication is that he'll do it again as president."
Mr Romney forged his reputation as an expert troubleshooter at Bain Capital, the Boston-based buyout fund he co-founded in 1984. Over the following 14 years, he led turnarounds of businesses including Staples, the office supplies retailer, and Domino's, the pizza chain, transforming Bain into one of the world's biggest private-equity companies.
When preparations for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics were hit by a corruption scandal in 1998, organisers turned to Mr Romney. His success helped him win election as governor of Massachusetts in 2002, pledging to restore order to the state's troubled finances. Two years later, he had turned a $3bn deficit into a $700m surplus.
This Massachusetts background is a source of suspicion for many conservatives, who view the state as a hotbed of liberal radicalism. Opponents have accused him of political opportunism by abandoning the moderate territory he occupied as governor and reinventing himself as a social conservative.
In Marshalltown, however, he made a virtue of his success in bringing fiscal discipline to a liberal state and forging consensus with Democrats - in contrast to the bloated federal spending and divisive partisan politics associated with Washington.
For many Republicans, Mr Romney's record of competent leadership and fiscal conservatism is an appealing combination after President George W. Bush's presidency, during which both qualities have often appeared lacking.
"He won't come out and say it openly, but Romney is running against Bush," says Mr Covington.
Unfortunately for Mr Romney, he is not the only Republican candidate with a stellar reputation for leadership. Rudy Giuliani boasted a similar record as mayor of New York and his successes -tackling crime and stabilising the city after the September 2001 terrorist attacks - are more widely known than Mr Romney's.
Polls show Mr Giuliani with a commanding lead in the Republican race, supported by nearly 30 per cent of likely Republican voters, compared with 13 per cent for Mr Romney, who trails behind Fred Thompson and John McCain.
Mr Romney has sought to overcome this by focusing almost exclusively on Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, which hold crucial early nominating contests. His strategy relies upon victory in at least two of those states to give him momentum heading into the barrage of other primary elections in early February.
If he can establish himself as a serious contender, Mr Romney would aim to exploit misgivings among conservatives about Mr Giuliani's liberal record on social issues such as abortion and gay marriage. While Mr Romney's Mormon faith poses problems for some evangelical Christians, his unblemished personal life - he is still married to his high-school sweetheart after 38 years - could give him an advantage over the twice-divorced Mr Giuliani.
Polls indicate Mr Romney's strategy has a chance. He has a solid lead in Iowa and New Hampshire and is neck-and-neck with Mr Giuliani in South Carolina. There is no guarantee, however, that success in those three states will secure the nomination because Mr Giuliani could prove strong enough to overcome early setbacks.
The biggest threat to Mr Romney could come from an unexpected quarter. Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, has surged into a surprise second place in Iowa, where his folksy style and underdog status have strong appeal. "Romney needs a big win in Iowa," says Mr Roberts. "The closer Huckabee gets, the less momentum Romney will take out of the state."
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FTD.de, 20.12.2007
© 2007 Financial Times Deutschland,
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