There’s a lot of hype about Willard Mitt Romney’s role in saving the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics; Mittens of course is trying to showcase his position of “savior” of the games as a natural springboard to the Presidency, but I’m not sure there’s a lot of bobsledding or downhill skiing competitions scheduled through the Oval Office.
Of course Mitten didn’t handle the scheduling of events, or the producing of the opening or closing exercises, or the choice of venues for the events, anymore than he sold concessions, so, what exactly did Romney do?
Romney was asked to step in as a titular head of the committee after his predecessors had been caught in a scandal of providing money and hookers to the Internal Olympic Committee to help sweeten the deal of choosing Salt Lake City. They needed someone who looked squeaky clean in a business suit, and they picked a millionaire businessman, with perfect hair and a Pepsodent smile. Let’s be serious, he made business decisions; he didn’t “save the Olympics”.
As far as his role there preparing him for being President, really? That’s like saying Coach Smith at the local high school set up a great track meet he should be the mayor; or Joe Jones, owner of the local tire store, helped setup advertising for the state basketball tournament he’d make a great governor. Since when does running the business end of a sporting event qualify someone for being President? The short and long answer is it doesn’t, any more than Mittens time as a pirate at Bain Capital has. It’s all resume padding.
Mittens has exaggerated his spot as the head of the Salt Lake Olympics, just like his claim that he was a “severe conservative” governor, or that he was a job creator. One thing’s absolutely clear about Romney; he may not be very good at hyping his career, but he’s good at trying to sell stuff; the key operating word being “trying”.
What’s truly amazing is how Romney can be showered with wonderful accolades for having saved a sporting event, but conservatives won’t give the President any credit for having gotten Bin Laden?
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