Willard Mitt Romney's major claim to the presidency is that, as an experienced, successful businessman, he knows how to create jobs as chief executive. This has prompted close scrutiny of his business, Bain Capital.
That focus misses the larger point: whatever his Bain experience was, Romney's job creation record as governor was, to borrow a term from Newt Gingrich, pathetic.
Bain Capital was one of many private equity funds that engaged in a wide range of activities to make money for its investors. It was not focused on creating jobs in the economy, but rather saw opportunities to start, purchase, merge, restructure, close, offshore, sell and otherwise manipulate companies to make nice profits for themselves.
That Willard has not a single pang of conscience about what he did because it was posited as how capitalism works is a reasonable issue for a person aspiring to be president to address. How an individual reacts to it has more to do with one's philosophical views of life, society and the economy that it does to Romney's particular role in it.
But there is a bigger and simpler conclusion to be drawn. Romney espouses his business experience as "proof" that he is the one to foster job creation and economic growth. Even accepting everything Romney claims about his activities at Bain Capital at face value, Romney demonstrated already that that experience did not translate into creating jobs as a governor -- Massachusetts under Romney was 47th in the nation in job creation.
Whatever Romney did at Bain, and whatever Bain did, it certainly did not make Romney a job-creating governor. There are those who may claim that, as 47th in the nation, his Bain experience may have made him even worse as governor for job creation... but, there is really no need to go there.
The point is this: Romney's entire premise that, as a businessman, he knows how to create jobs as chief executive in government, is phony.
But, then again, so is everything else about Mitt Romney phony.