There are two major differences between government and private enterprise that I have not seen discussed anywhere. Romney certainly will not discuss them - assuming he knows what they are which is seriously in doubt.
The first and most important difference is that private enterprise firms can select their customers and ignore everyone else. Since economic demand is defined as someone who desires a given product and service and who has the necessary money to pay for it that really limits who private enterprise firms deal with. The expenses required to deal with those who either do not want the firm's products or services OR those who cannot afford to pay for the products or services are eliminated. Any cost savings that a business executive can achieve over what government executives can achieve come from this advantage.
Government cannot select its customers. It has to serve and deal with everyone inside the geographic boundaries of the government and with a lot of additional people who have desires or needs involving those inside the national boundaries. Justice, law enforcement, public health, economic infrastructure, public education, national and local defense - all of these require government attention and add to the expenses of government. This paragraph is worth a book, but I will leave it to your imagination. Just remember, many nations have portions of the country within the putative boundaries which they cannot control. The modern example is the Waziristan provinces of Pakistan where the Taliban leaders are known to reside.
The funding differences between government and private enterprise is discussed below the fold.
The second important difference is the difference is the sources of funding for private enterprise and for government. Since private enterprise can restrict its dealings to its self-selected customer base, it can rely entirely on the profits from the sales of its goods and services. Private firms can also fail to pay for externalized costs such as environmental degradation, tearing up the roads and bridges, educating the work force, and so on. These are costs the economists claim firms externalize. A major cost is the instability created in the economy when a really large bank has major losses it cannot cover, but this is just one of many costs firms can externalize. The term that applies is privatizing profits while passing the losses off to the public.
Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital successfully by playing off this private/public difference. Bain capital always money no matter what happened to the firm they were raiding. The expenses of the money paid to Bain either were externalized to the employees or to the government. Whatever profit Bain took was the result of earlier investments by the previous owners, and those profits were given to Bain and to Romney. Romney might have provided a service by reorganizing an inefficient company so that it made money, but the price of such reorganization was always too high and the results were always externalized to Bain. The only question remaining was whether the people left with the wreckage Bain created could turn it into a new profitable enterprise.
If you look at the distinction between government and private enterprise it will quickly become obvious that nothing the Bain Vulture Capital Firm did can make government function better. The costs of not providing services to the sick will be borne by the sick and the costs of the uneducated will be born both by the uneducated and by the overall economy.
Mitt Romney is entirely unsuited to become President of the United States based on his major selling point - what he did as CEO of Bain Capital. He has neither the needed skills nor the required instincts. It is extremely doubtful that he could learn enough on the job in a mere four years to adequately deal with being President. Bain was all about the simple process of padding a Balance Sheet. The government is much more complicated than that.
Consider the difference between economics and accounting. If you are familiar with accounting you will know that the balance sheet and the income statement - the two key documents - you will be aware that those documents describe the summary of all the transactions conducted by the firm during the period they cover. That's all they describe. Nothing else.
Economics collects statistics on many firms and on government activities as well as collecting estimates on other activities that might effect the economy. An accountant and the business managers he serves are focused entirely on a single firm. The economists are focused on the overall economy - including health, education, and long-term effects. Business executives are famous for focusing on the bottom line. That's the profit and loss of the individual firm and the basis of their paycheck. It totally ignores the overall economy as well as long-term economic planning for families, firms as well as educational and public health activities. Forget Defense and law enforcement. Someone else does those things, and those are not people of importance.
Do you think the Republicans generally and Romney in particular even aware of the world outside the financial statements of whatever firm the business-turkey involved has been working in?
I don't.
There's a reason why the Wall Street Bankers resent the interference of government. They are balance-sheet accounting oriented, not economy-oriented . Their paychecks and promotions are based on the financial statements of their individual firms, not on the economic statistics. Everyone outside their firm exist either to be exploited or to be oppressed. They don't bother with any information that does not conform to those assumptions and beliefs.