Um, what?
...It’s a common thing for a presidential candidate to pontificate about an issue of the day. It’s quite another for one to take credit for something he had no discernible role in.
GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But that isn’t stopping Mitt Romney. On Monday, in an interview with Cleveland‘s WEWS-TV, Romney said, “I’ll take a lot of credit” for the revival of the Detroit companies that went through federally sponsored bankruptcies.
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As Justin Hyde on Motoramic put it, “It’s too bad for Romney that Al Gore invented the Internet so we could keep track of what actually happened.”
Nobody disagrees that Romney kicked off the debate over whether General Motors and Chrysler would be better off filing for Chapter 11, rather than go hat in hand to Congress for a bailout. His New York Times op-ed piece, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt,” has a place in the historic saga.
In the television interview, however, Romney takes his role further than just proposing an idea. Here’s what he said:
“ My own view, by the way, was that the auto companies needed to go through bankruptcy before government help. And frankly, that’s finally what the president did. He finally took them through bankruptcy. That was the right course I argued for from the very beginning. It was the UAW and the president that delayed the idea of bankruptcy. I pushed the idea of a managed bankruptcy and finally when that was done, and help was given, the companies got back on their feet. So I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that this industry’s come back.”
But where was Romney when the actual work was taking place on the bailout? As far as I could tell at the time, when I was reporting on the story on a daily basis for The Times, he was not involved in any visible way, beyond speaking about it.
There were Republican players who took part in the discussions, including Tenn. Sen. Robert Corker, who insisted that UAW members’ compensation be adjusted to reflect that of transplant auto workers, such as those he represented. Michigan’s former Republican governor, John Engler, now president of The Business Roundtable, did his best to round up support on Capitol Hill, before a Congressional bailout died in the Senate.
And of course, President George W. Bush got things rolling with the first assistance to the car companies, which kicked in just before Barack Obama took office and moved the ball further down the field.
If Romney was indeed pushing for the idea of a managed bankruptcy in the manner he describes, he wasn’t doing it where the automotive and political press corps could see it, beyond the op-ed page.
I don’t recall any of the lawyers, bankers, lawmakers, union leaders and others we all talked in the course of our reporting bringing up his name. In fact, one of the key bankers I spoke with regularly is a high-powered financier for GOP candidates, and he surely would have detailed Romney’s role, if he played one.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michelin...lout-say-what/
(facepalm)
Really?
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