On Tuesday, Team Romney unveiled a new and decidedly positive campaign ad touting the former governor’s leadership qualities and “stellar” business career:
In my view, this spot is notable for at least three reasons.
(1) Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney is an unapologetic believer in free enterprise. As Milton Friedman once said (today, incidentally, would have been his 100th birthday), “[t]he record of history is absolutely crystal clear, that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by the free-enterprise system.” Indeed. Charles Kessler, the W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, articulated this exact same point in a powerful essay published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal:
Mitt Romney's résumé at Bain should be a slam dunk. He has been a successful capitalist, and capitalism is the best thing that has ever happened to the material condition of the human race. From the dawn of history until the 18th century, every society in the world was impoverished, with only the thinnest film of wealth on top. Then came capitalism and the Industrial Revolution. Everywhere that capitalism subsequently took hold, national wealth began to increase and poverty began to fall. Everywhere that capitalism didn't take hold, people remained impoverished. Everywhere that capitalism has been rejected since then, poverty has increased.Capitalism has lifted the world out of poverty because it gives people a chance to get rich by creating value and reaping the rewards. Who better to be president of the greatest of all capitalist nations than a man who got rich by being a brilliant capitalist?
I couldn't agree more.
At a time when the President of the United States -- perhaps unintentionally -- has increasingly revealed his "true colors" by insulting entrepreneurs and insisting they “didn’t build” their own respective enterprises, we need more public servants who recognize the efficacy and value of capitalism. Remember, also, the free enterprise system has lifted more than 200 million people out of poverty -- a fact Occupy Wall Street protestors, radical leftists, and the Hollywood glitterati conveniently ignores.
(2) Mitt Romney has a proven track record of turning around failing organizations, most notably the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. Fraser Bullock, the Chief Operations Officer of the Games, recently explained his invaluable contribution to making the 2002 Olympics hugely successful:
He faced a 400 million dollar budget deficit, and turned that around into a 100 million dollar surplus.
(3) Mitt Romney -- a successful one-term governor from a wealthy and populous state -- actually understands how to balance a budget. He balanced his state’s budget every year he was governor without raising taxes. By contrast, President Obama has run up four straight "trillion-dollar-plus" deficits when, as early as 2009, he pledged to cut the national deficit in half by the end of his first term. Furthermore, his latest budget proposal was so breathtakingly unserious not only was it voted down unanimously, it never even came close to balancing:
The differences between President Obama and Governor Romney are stark. Nevertheless, as Guy explained last week, the GOP cannot win in November merely by discrediting the president’s policies and exposing his failures; Republicans must make the case for Mitt Romney. And thankfully, this spot does exactly that.
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