David Corn

Washington Bureau Chief

Corn has broken stories on presidents, politicians, and other Washington players. He's written for numerous publications and is a talk show regular. His best-selling books include Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.

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2 Minutes with David Corn: Breaking Down the Bain Video

—By Dana Liebelson and David Corn

| Fri Sep. 28, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

The latest Mitt Romney video released by Mother Jones Washington Bureau Chief David Corn doesn't address the "47 percent," but it does reveal some uncomfortable truths about how the GOP candidate viewed his role at Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded.

Speaking in 1985 at the 20th anniversary of Bain & Company, a young Romney said: "Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit."

In two minutes, Corn breaks down exactly why Romney's top priority at Bain wasn't creating jobs or building strong companies. He also raises the question: What makes Romney qualified to do so now as a potential president?

Have an issue or a MoJo reporter you would like us to spend two minutes with? Drop us an email at dliebelson@motherjones.com.

Music by: Mike Smirnoff

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NEW ROMNEY VIDEO: In 1985, He Said Bain Would "Harvest" Companies for Profits

This clip shows the young CEO focusing on businesses as targets for his investors, not as job creators or community stakeholders.

—By David Corn

| Thu Sep. 27, 2012 3:00 AM PDT

Campaigning for the presidency, Mitt Romney has pointed to his stint as the founder and manager of Bain Capital, a private equity firm, as proof he can rev up the US economy and create jobs at a faster clip than President Barack Obama. Last year, while stumping in Florida, Romney declared, "You'd have a president who has spent his life in business—small business, big business—and who knows something about how jobs are created and how we compete around the world." His campaign spokeswoman, Andrea Saul, has said that Romney's Bain days afford him more expertise than Obama to "focus on job creation and turn around our nation's faltering economy." Romney has even claimed that during his tenure at Bain, "we were able to help create over 100,000 jobs." In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, Romney smacked Obama for having "almost no experience working in a business" and tied that to the sluggish recovery.

More MoJo coverage of Mitt Romney:

But at Bain, Romney's top priority wasn't to boost employment. As the Wall Street Journal recently noted, creating jobs "wasn't the aim of Bain or other private-equity firms, which measure success by returns produced for investors." And, the newspaper reported, Romney's 100,000-jobs claim is tough to evaluate.

Mother Jones has obtained a video from 1985 in which Romney, describing Bain's formation, showed how he viewed the firm's mission. He explained that its goal was to identify potential and hidden value in companies, buy significant stakes in these businesses, and then "harvest them at a significant profit" within five to eight years.

The video was included in a CD-ROM created in 1998 to mark the 25th anniversary of Bain & Company, the consulting firm that gave birth to Bain Capital. Here is the full clip, as it appeared on that CD-ROM (the editing occurred within the original):

TRANSCRIPT: Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…The fund was formed on September 30th of last year. It's been about 10 months then. It was formed with $37 million in invested cash. An additional $50 million or so of what I'll call a call pool, which is money that we can call upon if the deals are large enough that they require more than a $2 or $3 million dollar initial investment. Why in the world did Bain and Company get involved in this kind of a business? We're not particularly noted for having years and years of experience in financing. Three reasons. We recognized that we had the potential to develop a significant and proprietary flow of business opportunities. Secondly, we had concepts and experience which would allow us to identify potential value and hidden value in a particular investment candidate. And third, we had the consulting resources and management skills and management resources to become actively involved in the companies we invested in to help them realize their potential value.

The CD-ROM was a hip-hip-hooray for Bain & Company—in one video, an employee noted that the operating principle of the firm is "never lose sight of the fact that there is at least a 1 percent chance that you may not know the answer or the answer you have may be wrong"—and it was produced for distribution to the firm's employees and clients. The video did not note where Romney made these remarks about the origins of Bain Capital. But this short clip offers a glimpse of Romney when he was at the start of his private equity career and saw businesses as targets of opportunity that could be harvested for the benefit of his investors, not as long-term job creators or participants in a larger community. His remarks were hardly surprising, but they did encapsulate the mindset of get-in/get-out private equity deal makers.

The CD-ROM, which was given to Mother Jones by a former Bain & Company employee, also provides a look at the corporate culture of the consulting firm. Here's how Bainiacs poked fun at themselves, sketch-comedy-style:

And here's how the Bain & Company gang partied at annual meetings, where employees came together to form what was known as the "Bain Band" (note the easy transformation from "Jesus Is Just Alright" to "Working at Bain's Alright"):

The CD-ROM contained no footage of Romney singing or cutting up when he was a prominent player at the consulting shop, which was before Bill Bain, its founder, pushed Romney to leave Bain & Company to create and lead Bain Capital. There is only that one video of Romney discussing his private equity firm in its first months. In this clip, Romney mentioned that it would routinely take up to eight years to turn around a firm—though he now slams the president for failing to revive the entire US economy in half that time.

The Most Damning Line in the Secret Romney Video

—By David Corn

| Mon Sep. 24, 2012 10:24 AM PDT

In the week since I made public the secret video of Mitt Romney at a private Boca Raton fundraiser denigrating almost half of America as moochers and victims, I've been repeatedly asked what I consider the most damaging—or damning—portion of Romney's remarks. I've noted that the great thing about this story is that people can watch the video for themselves—7 million people went to this site or YouTube in the first days of the video's release and did that—and reach their own conclusions.

Yet one sentence did stand out to me. When Romney was in mid-rant about the 47 percent—simplistically and erroneously conflating three subsets of Americans: those who voted for Barack Obama, those who receive some form of government assistance, and those who pay no federal income taxes—he said:

I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

Here was Romney sharing his view that Americans who don't make enough money to pay income taxes and his fellow citizens who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or other government programs are lesser people than he and the millionaires before him. These people, Romney was saying, are not adults; they do not, and will not, fend for themselves or do what they must to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and care for themselves and their family members. It was an arrogant insult spoken with true detachment. This was 100-percent 1-percent.

My view of this one line was reinforced this morning. I walked into a store to buy some cleaning products. The 40-something woman at the counter rang up the purchases and kept looking at me. Once I had paid, she said in a low voice, "I really don't want to bother you, but..."

Go ahead, I said.

But I know who you are, and I just want to say that Mitt Romney doesn't know what he's talking about. Not at all. I am college-educated, but look where I'm working now. I can't find a better job now. And, and….

She paused and lowered her voice more:

I'm on food stamps. I didn't have a choice. I'm making about $12,000 a year now. And I need them. I work hard. And I'm looking for other work. But just because I'm on food stamps doesn't mean I'm not taking care of myself. Doesn't he know that? Doesn't he get it?

Apparently not. Many people on food stamps, Medicaid, and the like do strive to provide for themselves and their families. The working poor…work. They may even park cars at fancy fundraisers for minimum wage. Romney all-too glibly characterized anyone receiving any public assistance as a parasitic freeloader, and he revealed an us-versus-them attitude that was tremendously ungracious, mean-spirited, and predicated on ignorance of the real world.

"Thank you, thank you," the woman said. "You showed us what he really thinks of us, what he thinks of me."

Mitt Romney built that.

Memo to Chuck Todd: There Is No Missing Context

—By David Corn

| Thu Sep. 20, 2012 12:05 PM PDT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/49086399#49086399

I like Chuck Todd, but he missed the mark this morning when he tweeted:

Guess what politics needs now: instant replay reviews. Both Romney and Obama had their leaked videos missing important context

Immediately folks on Twitter, including yours truly, challenged Todd to specify what he meant regarding the Romney video. (The recently disseminated Obama video showed the president in 1998 supporting "redistribution at a certain level," but it left out the next sentence in which he talked about the need for fostering competition in the marketplace.) Todd later clarified his tweet a bit: "The only missing Romney context to video I was referring to was on his Mideast remarks. Doesn't disqualify tape itself folks." And he referred to an item in NBC News' First Read tip sheet that noted, "Republicans yesterday jumped all over a Politico piece, noting that a portion of Romney's comments in that Mother Jones video on Middle East peace (where Romney acknowledges that there could eventually be peace) had been omitted." First Read noted that the absence of these few sentences did not "negate what Romney also said about the Middle East (that Palestinians don't have an interest in peace and that a two-state solution isn't feasible)," but it added that the "whole story" wasn't told.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Romney's Video-Debunking Claim Is…Debunked

—By David Corn

| Wed Sep. 19, 2012 4:00 PM PDT

This is getting ridiculous.

After Mother Jones posted video of Mitt Romney sharing remarks with millionaire donors that he would never express to voters—noting that nearly half of the American electorate are moochers and that Romney doesn't believe a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is feasible—Romney did not deny he said what he said. As the cliché goes, he doubled down, saying his remarks were inelegant but a reflection of his views about the rapid growth of entitlement programs in the United States. (Actually, this was a bait-and-switch operation. Romney was not talking policy when he disdainfully described half of the citizenry as parasites and victims.)

On Wednesday afternoon, he went further, with his campaign claiming that the video had been "debunked." In lashing out at the Obama campaign, Romney's crew issued this email:

Today, The Obama Campaign Leveled False Attacks Against Mitt Romney Based On A Debunked And Selectively Edited Video:

Today, Obama Campaign Spokesperson Ben LaBolt Attacked Mitt Romney Based On A Debunked Mother Jones Tape. OBAMA CAMPAIGN SPOKESMAN BEN LABOLT: "You heard on the tapes released this week that it's Mitt Romney who would walk away from the peace process." (MSNBC, 9/19/12)

But This Morning, Politico Reported That The Mother Jones Video Was Selectively Edited To Give A False Impression About Mitt Romney’s Views On The Middle East Peace Process. "But the clip initially provided by Mother Jones does not include that part of his remarks, and therefore was not reported by the aforementioned news outlets. Romney's complete remarks about the Mideast peace process were included in the complete video Mother Jones published Tuesday afternoon, less than 24 hours after it released clips from the fundraiser. But the clip posted to the Mother Jones website, which was cited by the national media, cuts out the excerpt in which Romney says that 'American strength, American resolve' will cause the Palestinians to 'some day reach the point where they want peace more than we're trying to force peace on them.'" (Dylan Byers, "Technically, Romney Said Peace Was Possible," Politico, 9/19/12)

The Romney campaign was clearly implying the whole video was rubbish. But there's a slight problem. Politico's Dylan Byers, the source for the debunking charge, quickly noted that he had done no such thing. He wrote:

there is nothing in my report that "debunks" the video.

In his article, posted earlier in the day, Byers had noted how some folks were complaining that we had edited a long clip of Romney talking about the Middle East selectively. In that clip—watch it here—Romney trashed the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, said the Palestinians (whom he lumped into one mindset) did not want peace and only sought the destruction of Israel, that he would not actively pursue the peace process and would instead seek to "kick the ball down the field," and that he had paid no real attention when a former secretary of state had told him that peace might be possible in the Middle East.

That is a total diss of the peace process—and would represent a radical break with US policy, which has supported a two-state solution since the Clinton years.

Yet Romney went on to say—and this clip did not include this—that if the United States showed "resolve….the Palestinians will some day reach the point where they want peace more than we're trying to force peace on them." Thus, peace might be theoretically possible at some point in the distance.

This was not a case of selective editing. The point was to show what was newsworthy: Romney breaking with current policy and stating views that he has not stated publicly. (In an interview this summer, he said he supported a two-state solution.) Nevertheless, some Romney backers have cried foul and managed to turn this into a dispute they can use to raise questions about the secret Romney tape.

But don't take my word. Here's more from Byers:

More mysterious still, is why the Romney campaign wants to debunk a video containing remarks that the candidate doubled-down on in a follow-up press conference.

Slate's Dave Weigel has weighed in as well:

By calling the whole tape "debunked" and "selectively edited," the campaign's hewing closer to the Breitbart.com argument -- the real story is liberal media-Obama collusion. And the result is a sort of paradox, in which Romney stands by what he said in a video that you can't trust.

It was bizarre. After Byers and Weigel had debunked the Romney camp's debunking, Byers heard from a Romney aide who said that the campaign only takes issue with the clip regarding Romney's view on the Mideast, not the entire video.

In other words, the Romney campaign walked back the push-back. It's not challenging the "47 percent" material or anything else; only the Mideast remarks. But, as I've said a few thousand times on television these past few days, the wonderful thing about this story is that people can view for themselves. Watch Romney talking about the Mideast, and it's clear he has contempt for the peace process as it has been conceived for years; does not believe it can work; and would chart a radically different course. The few sentences not included in that clip—but which were included in the full transcript and complete tape we released—do not a debunking make. This maneuver smacks of desperation from a campaign hurt by the undeniable words of its candidate.