There is a lot of buzz today about the Politico story vis the incompetence of the Romney campaign, including the personal incompetence of the candidate, himself. This incompetence is no surprise, though. Let's connect a few dots, shall we?
Here's the money quote in the Politico article (note: link is to the Slate account):
"But whatever Stevens’s shortcomings, presidential candidates get the campaigns they want. And Romney, who in an interview with POLITICO last month said his leadership style very much centers on having a variety of smart people offering advice and him being the decider, has taken a very active role running his own campaign. In a way, that’s the problem. Romney associates are baffled that such a successful corporate leader has created a team with so few lines of authority or accountability."
The key problem here is that Romney is not a "successful corporate leader."
The core skill of a private equity (PE) kingpin is to encourage a small set of top company stakeholders to enter into a financial transaction that will A) enrich the PE guys, and B) enrich the selling/parachuting executives, while C) very likely screwing a much larger set of stakeholders.
The screwed stakeholders include the majority of employees, the communities where they live, and often customers, as a lot of these deals are partly about eliminating competition to give "rolled-up" entities more pricing power.
Analyze a lot of these deals through the lens of the enterprise, instead of the lens of the private equity guys/financial engineers/looters, and they make little sense. The promised productivity gains, market expansion, market share growth - whatever - usually run from ludicrous to implausible.
People who know these businesses and markets grasp immediately that there is very little chance the resulting companies, post acquisition, slash-and-burn, and financial shenanigans, will be healthier or have greater potential than before the vultures showed up on the perch.
The KB Toys deal and Dunkin Donuts deal described in the Taibbi piece of a few weeks back are fine examples of this grift in practice.
Study these deals and this ecosystem and you will come to the following revelation:
The key skill set to be a private equity kingpin is sales. The successful PE executive needs to be able to sell "the deal" - to both the money guys and the targets. The key PE kingpin skill set is notably not analytical prowess or managerial prowess.
If PE firms were not grifters, and they were in fact run by people with first-rate analytical and managerial talent - i.e., successful corporate leaders - you would not see the vast trail of carnage - failed companies - in the wake of PE transactions.
Now hold on, you may argue. You're trying to tell me Romney has skill as a salesman, given his wooden TV persona and awful debate performances?
My friends, there is an old saw that to sell something, you have to believe in it. Romney doesn't really believe half the things he says in the context of the campaign. He can't sell the BS economic, foreign policy, and social platforms of his campaign, because he knows most of it is crap. This is not to say he has some firm set of alternative beliefs. He doesn't. He may be the most cynical Presidential candidate in history (which is saying a lot, but still probably true).
However, if you were a senior corporate officer at a "target" company and he came to you and said, "Look sign this deal, we'll take over the company, the banks will pour in a ton of capital, we'll do a little "restructuring", and you will personally walk away with at least $15 million," he would have a lot of credibility (not to mention passion at the $30 million he'd be planning to take out, himself).
In sum, people assume Romney was a "successful corporate leader" because he accrued vast personal wealth through his financial engineering escapades.
However, the only talent Romney ever proved was for exploiting tax loopholes to connect the fortunes of Latin American family dynasties and big banks with the cyncial motives of small-minded executives happy to sell out their companies, employees, and communities for a nice golden parachute.