Clueless Obama attacks profit motive in Mitt Romney’s business career

Barack Obama seems determined to make profit a dirty word. In attacking Mitt Romney’s business background, he’s making it clear that he has contempt for the free market that created the long-term national prosperity that he’s spent nearly four years helping to destroy.

Speaking in Iowa Thursday, Obama spoke of private equity firms — such as Bain Capital, Romney’s former company — as having motives other than job creation, as though that’s a bad thing.

“The people who work in these firms will tell you [job creation is] not their goal,” Obama said. He added that the companies’ goal is “maximizing short-term gains for your investors. There may be value for that type of experience but it’s not in the White House.”

Let’s review this. It’s business that generates the wealth of the nation on a long-term basis. Right now, business is in serious trouble, partly because of mistakes made by the business community, but even more so because of government interference that’s destroying the economy and manipulating markets. And even though the country desperately needs business to rebound and start growing again — as Obama would be the first to admit — he is clueless enough to claim it’s a liability for a presidential candidate to have experience in the private sector with making money? Is he insane or just dishonest?

I have no love for Romney, so I’m not trying to make the case for his election. (You should know by now where I stand on the whole system.) So this isn’t about hoping to make Romney look better. It’s just about being honest.

I don’t believe in the system, and I don’t think it ultimately matters which one is elected this year. I don’t think the future of the country will play out along substantially different lines either way. I think Romney is a shallow and unprincipled hack who would say or do anything to gain power. I don’t trust him and I disagree with his principles.

But Obama has done something that Romney couldn’t do. He’s actually made Romney look a slight bit better to me. Even though I think he’s an opportunist with a lust for power — trying to win an office that eluded his father — at least he understands what it takes to run a business. He understands what it means to make a profit. And unlike Obama, he doesn’t seem to think it’s a dirty thing to make money.

As for Obama, what does he offer in place of a career of making profits? He has nothing much other than a career as a political activist — a community organizer. (Well, there’s also his time teaching constitutional law, but he has such a warped political perspective on the subject that it’s clear it was an extension of his political activity.) In other words, he’s never made a dime of profit. He’s never created jobs. He’s never done much of anything.

I don’t care for either man — and my choice for president is Nobody — but the idea that someone who understands the profit motive and has pursued it well is unfit for the White House is insane. If Obama believes this idea, he’s an idiot. If he doesn’t believe it and says it anyway, he’s a liar. Either way, he’s a fool.