but congratulating yourself for success rubs people the wrong way. politicians who are successful are ones who make the campaign about other people. about we, not about me. not about patting themselves on the back in an untoward way. he better be prepared to explain how he made every nickel at bain capital. okay, explain how ut made the money. this opens the door for that. we thought it was gone with newt gingrich s documentary being done and over with. but this opens the door. if you think you are the definition of success, which is what he was saying. look at me, i am success. then let s put that under the microscope and look at that. and the bain bane, you know, there are examples but there are times when they didn t exact act in a fair manner. he talks about success equalling fairness. if you lose your job because guys come in and take it away, that s not fair. in an interview with piers
access to the good schools of their choice. well stop the unfairness of politicians giving taxpayer money to their friends businesses. we will stop the unfairness of requiring union workers to contribute to politicians not of their choosing. we will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the very taxpayers they serve. and one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next. a huge problem out there, john, you are covering this campaign, writing another book on it. here is the problem with this guy, romney. at the same time he comes out and said not only should we respect great wealth we should congratulate it. congratulate people that make money, no matter how they make it. land developers, strip miners, hedge funders, whatever. make a lot of money and applaud you and congratulate you. at the same time, he is trying to poach the theme of fairness from the democrats because he saw the wall street journal nbc
poll last week that showed fairness beats the stuff that he has been selling. your thoughts? well, chris, i mean, first of all, i think there s no question that it is a problem to try to co-op this theme of the democrats for mitt romney. i think any discussion of fairness is largely defined behind democratic terms so you have conversations about the tax code and those conversations are to the presidents and democrats advantage. i think what rm knee campaign is trying to do here is trying to do something they have been doing and quite effectively for a little while. which is to say, we won t seed any turf to this president. well fight, not let you have ground, that you can have just uncontested. that is a fighter stance and it works well with republican voters. might even work well with voters in the middle. as you say, i think you end up playing on president s turf. but this language issue as you just pointed out, there is a mile, more than a mile, many miles, an ocean of difference