Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney waving to a crowd in Ohio. (Photo credit: mittromney.com)
Mitt Romney is refusing to answer questions about contacts with his Bain Capital subordinates after he took a partial leave of absence in February 1999 to work on the Winter Olympics. Instead, he's sticking to sweeping denials that he had any role in managing the company as it off-shored jobs and shuttered factories.
Increasingly, Romney's defense relies on self-styled "independent fact-checkers," Brooks Jackson at Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org and the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, who have issued quarrelsome denunciations of President Barack Obama's campaign for connecting Romney to Bain's activities from 1999 to 2002.
Yet, these "fact-checkers" acknowledge that they are operating with a limited body of facts, i.e. what has so far been made public. In an interview on MSNBC on Monday, Kessler admitted that he had no access to internal information at Bain Capital regarding how often Romney was in touch with his company in those three years.
Nevertheless, Romney repeatedly has cited the two "fact-checkers" as clearing him of allegations from the Obama campaign -- and now from a number of news organizations -- that a long paper trail exists of Bain Capital reporting Romney's continued involvement with Bain during the three years in question.
To state the obvious, it seems like a contradiction in purpose for "independent fact-checkers" to allow themselves to become accomplices in a politician stonewalling the disclosure of facts that bear directly on his qualifications and integrity. At minimum, it would seem that Jackson and Kessler should suspend their denunciations of the Obama campaign until Romney and Bain clear up the many discrepancies.
On Monday, the New York Times tallied 142 times when Romney's name appears on Bain's securities regulation forms during the three-year period, many listing him as owner, chairman, chief executive officer and the controlling person. Talking Points Memo cited one such form that listed Romney's "principal occupation" as "managing director" of Bain Capital Investors VI Inc., a private equity fund.
Romney also told the Boston Herald in 1999 that he would continue assisting Bain in decisions regarding investments and personnel. However, in TV interviews last Friday, Romney repeated his current mantra that he provided no such input. When pressed on exactly what contacts he actually had, he dodged the questions and referred back to the supportive stories by the two "independent fact-checkers."
"Retroactive" Retirement?
On Sunday, Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, went on CNN to reiterate Romney's position, but added a new twist by claiming that Romney had "retired retroactively" from Bain Capital two years after moving to Salt Lake City -- whatever that means.
Ever since he ran for Massachusetts governor in 2002, Romney has sought to distance himself from the results of Bain Capital investments, including some that he engineered before his partial leave of absence in 1999. Some of those investments led to closed factories, painful layoffs and off-shoring of jobs to low-wage countries.
Instead of taking responsibility for those outcomes, Romney has insisted that a bright line existed between his 15 years of hands-on control of the private equity firm and the three years after he agreed to oversee the Winter Olympics games in Salt Lake City.
That attempt to convince voters that there was a "good" Bain Capital under Romney and a "bad" Bain Capital once he left has led to the current confusion and -- as far as the Romney campaign is concerned -- the helpful intervention of the two "independent fact-checkers." But they acknowledge that they have no inside information about exactly what Romney was telling his subordinates during those years or how often he was in communication with them.
The "fact-checkers" simply have taken Romney at his word and taken Obama to task. Annenberg's FactCheck.org told the President's campaign that it was "all wet" in its six-page defense of the Obama ads that blamed Romney for Bain-related layoffs and off-shoring. Kessler gave Obama and his campaign four "Pinocchios" (a total "whopper") in one "fact-check" and three "Pinocchios" in a follow-up.
Those "fact-checking" reports, which read more like tendentious legal arguments from Romney's lawyers than journalistic assessments, prompted Romney to flood the airwaves with attack ads citing those "independent fact-checkers" and calling President Obama a liar. Romney also demanded an "apology," which Obama refused to give. [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Romney "Fact-Checking' Scandal."]
Demands for Answers
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