Mitt Romney, Good for Employer and Employee Alike

There are multiple reasons why I get excited about the potential of Mitt Romney being the next President of the United States, even if it seems like a long shot. But aside from matters of religion, social policy, and there being fewer degrees of separation between me and him than between me and Kevin Bacon, I’m excited about the prospect of someone who is a real businessman in the White House.

An excerpt from Romney’s bio on Wikipedia follows:

After graduation from Harvard Business School, Romney went to work for the Boston Consulting Group, where he had been a summer intern in 1974. At BCG Romney worked with recent MIT graduate and future Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

From 1978 to 1984, Romney was a Vice President of Bain & Company, Inc., a Boston-based management consulting firm. Later, as the company’s CEO, he led it through a highly successful turnaround. Today, Bain & Company has 33 offices in 21 countries and 2,400 consultants.

In 1984, Romney co-founded Bain Capital, one of the nation’s most successful private equity investment firms. Among the first companies it invested in was Staples, an office-supply store. In 1986 Staples, Inc., had one store. Today it has nearly 1,700. Bain Capital founded, acquired or invested in hundreds of companies including Bright Horizons Family Solutions, Brookstone, Domino’s, Sealy and The Sports Authority.

At this point the other major contenders appear to be John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. McCain’s bio on Wikipedia has no references to business experience whatsoever. According to Giuliani’s bio his business experience began within the last few years with the founding of his consulting firm, and I have to wonder whether he’s really the guy behind the firm or simply the most publicly visible of a group of partners who are capitalizing on his name recognition.

Of those three, Romney is the only one with anything approaching what I would call “real” business experience.

Now some people out there might be saying “Why do I care if Mitt’s good for big business? What about the workers like me? What about the little guy?” While the majority of people in this country don’t own their own business, the majority of people who work do work for a business, as opposed to government jobs and such. If you work for a business, your financial position is tied to the success of that business. Sure, if that business does well that doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll get a big bonus or a raise, but if that business does poorly it pretty well guarantees you won’t get anything nice in your stocking come Christmas.

And I don’t think Romney would be good just for big business, I think he’d be good for small business, and the majority of workers in this country are employed by small businesses. As a small business owner myself, if Romney gets in office I’ll be looking for a simplified tax code, lower payroll taxes, a repaired Social Security program, and cheaper health insurance, all of which would mean less money coming out of my company towards the government and more going to my business, which means my employees benefit in the form of greater stability, higher pay, and more perks.

And if you think I would just take any extra money for myself while my employees suffer, let me tell you that I’m the lowest paid employee in my company, even though I own it, and have been for the past four years or more. Although I’m ultimately responsible for creating my own paycheck and those of my employees, I think Romney being in office would give me better tools for accomplishing my objectives as a business owner than any other candidate out there, Republican or Democrat.