Good CEOs don’t simply stake out public positions and stick to them for 20 years. They devise new business strategies and business plans to cope with changing market conditions. ~Daniel Gross

Mr. Gross offers an interesting take on the flip-flopper, arguing that Romney’s background in business explains his, er, flexibility with the issues.  I think his business background does explain a lot, but if Gross’ argument is right it is absolutely clear that Romney really is just saying whatever he thinks will win him votes.  Romney has been trying to sell himself as someone who has had a genuine awakening to the moral problems of our time (and the campaign finance reform problems and tax policy problems and gun regulation problems…), so it hardly helps that Mr. Gross can make such a plausible case that it is just another turnaround act.  The troubling thing is that he may not even realise that there’s something unethical about that.  He may even think that he’s simply solving another problem: “How do I rebrand myself to get maximal return?” 

Incidentally, I would like to point out that I suggested the Romney as corporate executive/rebranding explanation several days ago:

The one thing I do believe is that Romney really is a big believer in “innovation and transformation”: on this point, he literally practices what he preaches.  He believes in trying out new things, such as core beliefs and deeply personal reasons for believing these core beliefs, and adapting to changing circumstances (such as preparing to run for President) and transforming himself to be more competitive.  It’s not dishonesty–it’s more like improving fuel economy, just like his old dad did back when.  In his own way, he probably doesn’t think of his flip-flopping as an attempt trick or deceive the public.  He probably thinks that he is just responding to market demand and maximising vote-gathering efficiency.  This is a man who likes to cut out unnecessary waste, after all, and nothing would be more wasteful than to deprive his ambition and big hair from a shot at the White House.  In a sense, it is the ultimate challenge for the “turnaround” artist that Romney genuinely is.  He wants to show that he can not only bring faltering enterprises out of the red and save the Olympics from embarrassing failure, but that he can do blatant turnarounds on every issue in the book and somehow make a successful campaign out of it. 

Just remember: if something negative has been said about Romney, I have probably said it first.

Of course, the flip side, so to speak, of the good CEO who copes with market conditions is the very bad CEO who keeps talking up the company’s profits, even as he knows that the company is doomed, as a way of inflating his own stock before disaster strikes.  I guess it’s a strength in business to be able to reinvent yourself as whatever your client needs and then deliver the goods.  I can grasp the idea, but I don’t think I can fully sympathise with the mentality of the man who is able to do this.  (As my father has told me many times, I would make a lousy salesman, and he’s right, so perhaps I don’t quite understand this mentality.  Perhaps that’s why when I read old aristocratic writers saying derogatory things about commerce and merchants, I understand their sentiments much better instead.) 

The trouble is that reinvention in politics invites derision and skepticism (ask Al Gore) and there is the assumption that reinvention means that there will be no deliveries forthcoming.  Politics isn’t business, which is why people who talk about running government as if it were a business, while they probably mean well (they mean that they want to get rid of wasteful spending and reduce costs, etc.), are likely to end up bigger failures than the people who think of government as what it is: concentrated power and force in formal structures. 

By the way, if one of Romney’s selling points is that he isn’t a “professional politician” (despite his best efforts to become one!), it is strange that these virtues from his work in the corporate world–his adaptability and flexibility–are clearly liabilities in the political world.  The things that made him successful in business make him a terrible politician and make him embody all the worst flaws a politician can have.  Because of his background as a good businessman, ironically enough, he winds up appearing shifty, unscrupulous, and ambitious as a politician.  So why, then, is it worthwhile having someone like Romney as our non-politician President?

Besides, as Mr. Gross notes, Romney has decided to change “markets” at a particularly inauspicious moment.  Since Romney likes cars so much, let’s use an automotive metaphor.  It’s as if he’s trying to bring out a line of conventional, gas-guzzling SUVs at a time when CAFE standards (which he was for when he was making hybrids, but is now against) are about to be raised and after he spent years deriding SUVs and expressing deep offense at the suggestion that he would ever drive one.