A take off of a famous Nixon poster distributed by Kennedy supporters:
Really, we think the Romney shot is the more damning of the two. The Nixon shot just happens to show him looking kind of sleazy - it's not really much better than making fat jokes about Governor Christie. The Romney one is similar, in that the Mephistopholes look on his face is probably just a coincidence, but what's going on in the picture re-enforces the image of Romney as "that upper management meatball that everyone in the company thinks is incompetent." You can just picture him leaning over your cubicle and saying "What are you working on?" now and then, until the day he comes by and says, "Hi, Adam. Can you come by my office in a little bit for a little sit-down? That'd be great."
History shows that "experience" is not a great indicator of who will be a good president and who won't. Frankly, we've only had a handful who were all that great to start with, so there's no way to pick out a pattern of what sort of background a good president should have (and one can assume that it varies by era, anyway - different kinds of people are needed for different times). Many have been governors or military men, but many of those have also really sucked as president. Lincoln was a country lawyer and a former junior house nobody when he was elected. Eisenhower was a pretty good president who had military experience, but without enough political experience even to have declared which party he was in before the election. Grant was a great general whose experience didn't end up translating well. Herbert Hoover was one of the most successful and respected men in the world when he was elected - he was an organizational genius. Both parties wanted to nominate him at various times. But his policies didn't translate as well as they seemed like they would.
What happened with Borders books (the late, lamented chain store that actually carried our book) is an example of why we here at HQ don't think being a good business man means you'd be a good president. Borders tried to make next quarter look better by gradually lowering selection, focusing more on big-ticket items, and spending less on in-store events and entertainment at most locations. These moves cut back on costs and put the focus onto products with better margins, but after a few years of these cuts, they didn't have much of a company left. We can make our budget look better as a country by cutting back on spending on education, infrastructure, fire prevention, police, etc - but after a few years of it, how's the country going to look? You can't just lay people off to streamline the country. You can stop spending money on educating, feeding, or insuring them, but you'll still have to deal with them. They'll still be your citizens. It's not like firing them, where they're out of sight and out of mind once they're out the door.
Then again, in the interest of being fair and balanced, maybe now is the time for a business man to take the reins and turn the ship around. It'd be one hard message to sell, what with all the anti-corporate sentiment going around and all, but maybe Mitt can find a way to turn the above photo into a net positive.
