Mitt's USA, Inc. was no slip but HELL YEAH it's showing

If you pay attention to nothing else uttered by Willard Romney in the course of this election season, mark his following words as those which illuminate the soul and motivations of the former governor of Massachusetts in his run for the presidency:

"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."

His words should terrify you.

On its face, this statement, in particular the underlined word, seems merely one of those gaffes Beltway insiders get all giggly over and regular voters, like us, just shrug off. I cannot state how strong a warning these words serve nor how devastating their impact will be for this country should Romney win this election.

If you think I've somehow set my hair on fire in hysteria, consider that similar words threw off balance a man described as "a voracious dealmaker and not a very scrupulous one." Yes, none other than Rupert Murdoch, a man in many ways now master of the Republican candidate's destiny.

"At one point, Mr. Romney declared that 'I would probably bring in McKinsey,' the management consulting firm, to help him set up his presidential cabinet, a comment that seemed to startle the editors and left Mr. Murdoch visibly taken aback."

 This consultancy gambit is the high-performance engine that drives the Romney campaign. It is a backdoor attempt to pad his personal wealth using the clan's "blind" trust (a ruse as he has called the practice in past) as his personal piggy bank. The same trust that openly enriches his family and stashes proceeds accumulated in league with Bain co-conspirators.

But, you might say, there is no obvious link between Romney and McKinsey and you would be right. The report of this first meeting with Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal editorial board shows that Romney used his starting pitch for McKinsey as a beard for his true objective. He would later slide in the name Bain as a potential entrant in the game.

I would probably have super-cabinet secretaries, or at least some structure that McKinsey would guide me to put in place." He seems to catch a note of surprise in his audience, but he presses on: "I'm not kidding, I probably would bring in McKinsey. . . . I would consult with the best and the brightest minds, whether it's McKinsey, Bain, BCG or Jack Welch."

It has been Romney's goal all along to turn his version of venture capitalism into venture opportunism with access to the powers of the Federal Reserve and its ability to print an unlimited supplies of currency and (almost goes without saying) amass unfettered wealth.

And what of this McKinsey & Co. Willard so carefully has chosen to serve as his Bain surrogate? Influential market strategist Barry Ritholtz identifies McKinsey as a major, global management consulting firm that has "created dubious strategies for all manners (sic) of companies ranging from Enron to General Electric."

"Where ever there has been a financial disaster in the world, if you look around, somewhere in the background, McKinsey & Co. is nearby."

To bolster his case, Ritzholtz provides the following list of "more questionable" strategies -- a track record so stunning in its wrongheadedness and arrogance, it makes Paul Ryan's sub-three marathon fantasy bow in reverence:

• Advocating side pockets and off balance sheet accounting to Enron, it became known as “the firm that built Enron” (Guardian, BusinessWeek)
• Argued that NY was losing Derivative business to London, and should more aggressively pursue derivative underwriting  (Investment Dealers’ Digest)
• General Electric lost over $1 billion after following McKinsey’s advice in 2007 — just before the financial crisis hit. (The Ledger)
• Advising AT&T (Bell Labs invented cellphones) that there wasn’t much future to mobile phones (WaPo)
• Allstate reduced legitimate Auto claims payouts in a McK&Co strategem (Bloomberg, CNN NLB)
• Swissair went into bankruptcy after implementing a McKinsey strategy (BusinessWeek)
• British railway company Railtrack was advised to “reduce spending on infrastructure” — leading to a number of fatal accidents, and a subsequent collapse of Railtrack. (Property Week, the Independent)

Romney and his consigliere Eric Fehrnstrom refuse to give policy specifics throughout the prosecution of their campaign, enticing voters to blindly "take my word for it," 'IT' being every naked proposal put fort -- none of which contains a scintilla of specificity. Well, it's halftime in a grueling election season and absent the slightest hint of details behind the plan, I implore you, at least in the case of Romney's consultant-centric "super-cabinet idea," to do just that: Take him at his word.

As a dodge, in a series of side-stepping dodges, the Romney camp sloughs off suggestions that his plan for America the Company are anything but business as usual, attempting to cite the use of consultants by previous administrations. In this construct, even New Yorker's Louis Renard agrees, "There’s nothing radical about this."

"Obama has an efficiency expert from management consulting working for him; George W. Bush, who graduated from Harvard Business School a year after Romney, surrounded himself with management consultants in the White House. Herbert Hoover applied the “scientific management” techniques of Frederick Taylor to government bureaucracy."

What is radical and what was never employed by any of the presidents cited above is the outsourcing of the business of governing to a consulting firm. Rather, these chief executives selectively recruited and individuals to serve within the administration and advise them -- not run it for them. It is also telling that of all the management agencies available, the Romney crew chose this one, of which Ritzholtz testifies:

"No consulting firm that has been around as long as McKinsey has a blemish free record. But the total number of clusterfucks and McKinsey foibles they are associated with goes on and on."

Couple the devious nature of McKinsey with an admittedly unread candidate and it's not hard to imagine the looming disaster (Haliburton, anyone?)

During his 2007 campaign, Romney all but confessed his cluelessness about how  presidential decision-making should work, as well as his excessive reliance on external assistance, during an encounter in a 2007 Republican primary debate:

“At Tuesday's debate, the candidates were asked a hypothetical question about whether he would seek Congress's approval before taking action against Iran. Romney answered this way: "You sit down with your attorneys and {have them} tell you what you have to do," Romney said, adding quickly "but obviously the president of the United States has to do what's in the best interest of the United States to protect us against a potential threat."

Given a second chance by moderator Chris Matthews, who asked whether President Bush needed the Congressional approval he received for the Iraq invasion, Romney again offered a legalistic answer. "You know, we're going to let the lawyers sort out what he needed to do and what he didn't need to do," Romney said.”

After taking unfriendly fire from opponents and pundits for his "legalistic" responses, Romney flew onto the radar of Truman Security fellow and Iraq combat veteran Dan Futrell who mused in writing whether the GOP candidate possessed the character to serve as commander-in-chief. He seemed particularly concerned about Romney's promise of a super-cabinet whose first mission would be selecting his Cabinet.

 If Romney isn’t able to trust his judgment in selecting his own cabinet, why should we? Would Romney have asked management consultants whether or not to go after Osama bin Laden in Abottabad? Would Romney have asked management consultants whether to authorize a US Navy SEAL Team to use deadly force to rescue Captain Phillips from Somali pirates? How would Romney think about ordering an attack on Iran? ...

Does Romney have values and character that would enable him to make a decision, or would Romney make a 3:05 am call to his consultants before making a decision?

McKinsey-hired Cabinet Secretary: “President Romney, there’s an emergency. We have option A and option B. What do you want us to do?”
President Romney: “Let me get back to you.”

If candidate Romney won’t show us his character, and if he won’t take a risk of laying out a good foreign policy that his Republican base might not like, how do we know what he’d do when we need leadership most? And what about domestic decisions? Does he need consultants for that too? Would Romney have asked a team of consultants whether he should save the American auto industry?

 all blockquote emphasis added