George Romney made his money by being a boss — a leader. Mitt Romney has been the same thing. When things went wrong, people put Romney in charge of them — at Bain, at the Olympics, at a hundred companies he helped turn around or restructure.Since all leaders take risky decisions before all the facts are in - e.g., buying AAPL stock before it has already gone up - all leaders make some mistakes and are at least sometimes vulnerable to the second guess. Socialism is simply the theory that criticism - the forte of journalists - is even better than leadership, because second guesses are never wrong.Second guesses are never - well, hardly ever - wrong, but they are too late. By the time you make your “perfect” second guess, the horse is always already out of the barn. Socialism gets its traction from the propaganda power of journalists, who never suffer losses when their fantasy football teams lose. When their predictions or their panaceas fail, they simply change the subject.
The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.A follower doesn’t make decisions above his pay grade.
A real leader doesn’t make decisions below his pay grade, either.Socialism is a system in which the government assumes the role of forbidding everything it does not command. That is only justified if the government knows everything that anyone in society knows, and is able to synthesize that knowledge into more timely and more useful decisions than anyone in society at large can. Those conditions are never true - if only, as F.A. Hayek emphasized, because such a government (if not indeed, any government - will be headed by the people who are most ruthless in their quest for power. People who are willing, nay eager, to substitute second guessing for leadership. And lie about the results of their decisions.
What we hope for in a President Romney is simply a man who knows how to lead, and who delegates appropriately and does not micromanage but adheres to the Constitution. And, dare we hope, who names no justices to SCOTUS who are in love with the conceit of their own wisdom.All Marxists are in love with the idea of power for themselves, or at least power which will make them feel superior. Barak Obama is such. A Mitt Romney shows the value of good decision making and execution, and it is natural for a Barak Obama to feel threatened and therefore hostile to that, and to him.
Ping!