In the run-up to the critical Republican primary in Florida next Tuesday, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is stressing his business background. With the economy turning sour and the GOP candidates predictably turning to talk of tax cuts, Romney is touting his CEO credentials. Unfortunately, history shows that what's good for Mitt Romney's business isn't always good for America. Worse still, Romney desire to be the nation's second MBA president only serves to remind Americans that their experience with the first MBA president - George W. Bush - wasn't a pleasant one.
In Florida this week, Romney made the case that his Harvard MBA, his tenure at Bain, his Salt Lake Olympics experience and his stewardship of Massachusetts uniquely qualified him as America's CEO during tough economic times. The multimillionaire venture capitalist told Florida voters:

"I know how America works because I spent my life in the real economy...I won't need a briefing on how the economy works. I've been there. I know how the economy works."

Earlier in the week, Romney offered the reader's digest version of his resume:

"I've spent my life, 25 years...in the world of business. I know why jobs come and go."

As his record shows, Mitt Romney is all too familiar with why jobs go - out of state, out of the country or just go altogether.
In 1994, Romney's career as a vulture capitalist boomeranged against him in his Senate race against Ted Kennedy. The tale of SCM, a northern Indiana-based stationery company purchased by Ampad, a firm owned by Romney and a group of investors, came to dominate the campaign. As the New York Times recounted, in that instance in the vulture capitalist label was well-earned in the subsequent crackdown on the workers there:

Management has shed 41 of 265 blue-collar jobs, cut wages, tripled some workers' health insurance payments, abolished most of their seniority rights and junked the prior management's union contract, which had two years to run.

Romney's record in Massachusetts also loses some its luster upon closer inspection. While his campaign this week boasted of creating 57,600 jobs during Romney's tenure from 2003 to 2007, Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum pointed out that Massachusetts' performance lagged well behind the national average. As Reuters reported:

"The state lagged the U.S. average during that period in job creation, economic growth and wage increases.
As a strict labor market economist looking at the record, Massachusetts did very poorly during the Romney years, he [Sum] said. "On every measure you've got, the state was a substantial under-performer."

Romney's claims regarding the state budget are also largely chimerical. Like President Bush, Romney took credit for halving a budget deficit based on a wildly inflated initial forecast. The $3 billion shortfall Romney predicted January 2003 never materialized, as rising capital gains tax receipts alone trimmed the deficit to $1.3 billion.
One of the more fascinating legacies of Mitt Romney's private sector background concerns one of his favorite bogeyman, Iran. As I noted last February ("Romney, Cheney in Deep with Iran Investments"), in early 2007 Romney launched a high-profile campaign calling on state pension funds (in Democratic states, of course) to divest their holdings in firms doing business with Iran. Unfortunately for him, his old company was one of them.
On February 22, Romney sent letters to Democratic leaders including New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senators Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton as well as state comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli urging a policy of "strategic disinvestment from companies linked to the Iranian regime." But as the AP quickly discovered, Romney's former employer (Bain & Co.) and the company he founded (Bain Capital) have extensive links to recent Iranian business deals. Apparently missing the irony, Romney responded by saying of his Iran disinvestment PR scheme, "this is something for now-forward."
While Fox News is only too happy to promote Mitt Romney as the next MBA president, Americans are still suffering through the leadership of the first one. As I documented at length in 2006 ("Cheater in Chief: Bush as the MBA President"), more telling than President Bush's failure as our business leader is his personification of the MBA cheating culture itself. From working connections and claiming credit for the work of others to fudging the numbers and outright lying, George W. Bush is the picture of the MBA gone bad.
Which, as it turns out, is all too often the finished product of America's business schools. A 2006 Duke University study of 5,300 students at 54 institutions found that 56% of MBA students acknowledged cheating, more than those in fields such as education (48%), social sciences (39%) or even law (45%). Apparently, it is our future business leaders, and not the GOP bogeymen the trial lawyers, that Americans should trust least
Remember that the next time Mitt Romney proclaims he will be America's CEO President.