I live in Lakeland, Florida, so when I watched The Rachel Maddow Show Friday night and saw her play a portion of this clip, I was surprised to learn that while I was sound a sleep having stayed up in to the early morning hours trying to keep up with comments in two diaries, Mitt Romney was right here in the city that I live. Not that if I had known Romney was going to be here, I would have made an effort to drive over to the airport to see him speak in person. Anyway, he did leave a little gift here in Lakeland on Friday morning as he prepared to leave Florida ... a slip of the tongue.
It's not that he [President Obama] wasn't trying, in my view. He was pulling the wrong direction. He didn't know what it takes to actually make the economy work. Paul Ryan and I understand how the economy works. We understand how Washington works. We will reach across the aisle and find good people who, like us, want to make sure this company deals with its challenges. We'll get America on track again. And we've laid out many times, a five point plan ...
Rachel Maddow was very generous in reporting this. Okay, well, first she treated it with a bit of humor:
America is not a company. And does that mean Mitt Romney wants to fire all of us? Like he fired workers at a lot of those businesses Bain Capital bought so he could turn them around?
Prior to showing this clip of Romney, she showed one that Marco Rubio made during his speech at the convention (he said
We chose more government instead of more freedom, when he meant to say it the other way around), and one that Paul Ryan made while being interviewed by Brian Williams (he called his running mate,
Ripp Nomney. And then Rachel said,
I very much sympathize with candidates who get tired. I mean after three days of convention coverage, I woke up this morning and I looked at my alarm clock for several minutes with no idea what this thing was; trying to figure out why this thing I had never seen before was making this awful noise and what it wanted from me. No idea. All I had to do was cover the convention. Imagine how bushed this guys were who were in the middle of it.
Kudos to Rachel Maddow for taking the high road on this one. You know that if this had been the other way around, and Barack Obama had been the one who made a slip of the tongue, we would have seen that video clip in an endless loop on
Fox News for days on end.
I didn't see much news on television this weekend because I was trying to take a break from all the politics over the weekend. If one of the cable networks reported it, I'm not sure I'd be aware of it. I did find some online articles mentioning it.
Mother Jones reported:
It's not surprising Romney would make this slip. He made his name—and his fortune—turning around failing companies first at the consulting firm Bain and Company, and then at private equity firm Bain Capital. Indeed, his experience turning around failing or bloated companies is central to his pitch to voters for why he should be elected president. But voters may not appreciate Romney confusing the USA with an LLC.
WATCH: Mitt Romney Accidentally Calls the United States a "Company"
The Huffington Post said:
Mitt Romney, who has frequently highlighted his executive acumen in his campaign for the White House, mixed business with politics on Friday when he mistakenly called the United States a "company" that he thinks he and his running mate can rescue.
(snip)
Friday's comments were not the first time that the former Massachusetts governor fused boardroom lexicon with political rhetoric.
"Corporations are people, my friend," Romney told an unruly protester last summer at the Iowa State Fair.
Democrats pounced on the off-the-cuff reply as evidence that the GOP standard-bearer is too cozy with Wall Street and sympathetic to corporate greed.
Mitt Romney Refers To United States As 'Company' In Post-Republican National Convention Flub
Jed Lewison also posted the clip on the front page here a
DailyKos, but I missed it and had to go looking, so I suspect many of you might have missed it too.
I guess Mitt Romney lives in the United States of Company:
(snip)
Or maybe it's the United Companies of America. Either way, this sure is one way to upstage Clint Eastwood.
Mr. Bain calls America a 'company'
In my opinion,
Think Progress provided the best insight, making the valid point concerns me most; there is a big different between the goal of a company and the goal of government:
Mitt Romney is focused on convincing Americans that his private-sector business record qualifies him to be President, which is perhaps why he accidentally called the United States of America a “company” instead of a “country” on Friday.
While Romney has spoken extensively about running the government more efficiently, like a private business, he has never compared the entire American enterprise to an actual business enterprise.
(snip)
The goal of a company is to make money, whereas the goal of a government is to provide services that are not achievable in the private sector. Romney’s belief that the government is similar to a company explains his dedication to cutting programs that he perceives are “inefficient” because they cost money, even if they effectively help American citizens.
OOPS: Mitt Romney Calls United States A ‘Company’
This is what is unsettling about the thought of a Mitt Romney presidency. He'll attempt to run the country like a company, and that just doesn't work. I live down here in Florida where ex-CEO Rick Scott is currently our governor. I wrote a diary about this concern a few weeks ago where I included links to articles about Romney's governing style when he was the Governor of Massachusetts and Scott's style now.
Rick Scott is having difficulty understanding that Governors can't just issue orders and have them obeyed the way the chairman of a large company does. Governors are supposed to partner with the other branches of government, but it looks like former CEOs, used to having every order obeyed, have difficulty making the transition by cooperating with legislators.
Is Romney's CEO-Style of Governing like Rick Scott's?
What is totally baffling is that nobody is calling this particular slip of the tongue a
gaffe (which some have defined as accidentally telling the truth) or even a
Freudian slip. I wonder if this is a pity party? Are all these reporters cutting Romney some slack because of what happened on the final night of his convention, which Rachel Maddow summed up
later on during her show this way:
This is not about Clint Eastwood. This is about the Romney campaign blowing their biggest moment in the campaign so far. The biggest audience they will ever have to present their un-rebutted best case for their campaign. If nobody gets fired for this, what does that say about who's in charge over there?
Of course, it's just past four a.m. on Monday morning here. Talk about the Clint Eastwood performance has sucked all the oxygen out of the atmosphere, leaving little room for other discussion over the weekend. Perhaps we'll be hearing more about this slip of the tongue throughout the remainder of the day. And we may yet see it used in a campaign ad. Or perhaps now that Mitt Romney is officially the Republican nominee, the focus of the campaign is going to move from his time as a businessman to his time in government, holding the only elected office he's ever had.
Up until last week, we saw a lot of great campaign videos from the pro-Obama Super PAC Priorties USA Action, all dealing with Mitt Romney's association with Bain Capital. Just in time for the GOP convention last week during, Priorities USA Action released a new video and this time it was focused on Mitt Romney's time as Governor of Massachusetts. I saw this commercial on television on Sunday here in Florida.
Olive: I'm an independent. I voted for him. I contributed to him. Governor Romney promised that he would bring jobs to this state. By the time Governor Romney left office, we had fallen to 47th in the nation in terms of job growth. Governor Romney cares about big business, he cares about tax cuts for wealthy people. I certainly do not believe that he cares about my hard working employees.
On Screen: Olive Chase, Small Business Owner, 29 Employees, Massachusetts.
Olive: I feel like I was duped by Mitt Romney. I'm going to vote for President Obama.
Narrator: Priorities USA Action is responsible for the content of this advertising.
To view other ads from the Priorities USA Action that you might have missed, visit the Priorities USA Action Channel at Youtube.
What do you think? Will the clip of Romney calling the U.S.A. a company be used in a campaign ad? Was this a gaffe or just an honest slip of the tongue? Why did the clip receive so little coverage? Inquiring minds would like to know.