7 notes

…Romney’s remark exposed something on flagrant display all night. It’s that he’s a boss—and only a boss. He sees everything from the throne of a massive realm: Massachusetts, Bain Capital, and the many businesses he’s “had the privilege of staffing,” or however he puts it.

In yet another riff, one which might be more telling about Romney’s persona if less hilarious than the binder comment—and given in response to the question, “What plans do you have to put back and keep jobs here” in the U.S.—Romney said half-a-million manufacturing jobs had been lost in the last four years. “One of the reasons … is that people think it’s more attractive, in some cases, to go offshore than to stay here. We have made it less attractive for enterprises to stay here than to go offshore from time to time.”

People think it’s more attractive to go offshore? I don’t know about you, but I’ve never met a single person—no Joe Neighbor or Sally Gastroenterologist—who says, “I’m going offshore, where it’s more attractive.”

Who goes “offshore,” then? Enterprises do. Corporations. The same entities that, in his heart, Romney still believes are people. When Romney speaks of turning every American into a small-business king, it’s his way of rhetorically transforming American citizens, who baffle him, into American businesses, which he understands.

This is too bad. Romney is never going to make a connection with ordinary people—women or men—as long as he sees corporations as people, and people as the pitiful 47 percent of us who drag down that corporate super race.