| Thanks Dave Weigel, for making this utterly unworkable idea now part of the conversation. Washington - Two political commentators want Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to name Detroit-native Mitt Romney as the Motor City's emergency financial manager. On "Fox News Sunday," Washington Post opinion writer Charles Lane suggested the former GOP presidential nominee and turnaround expert at private equity firm Bain Capital should get the job of turning Detroit around. "You do see that Mitt Romney is a person with a lot of ability and a lot of energy. Who still has got a lot to contribute, and, you know, his hometown of Detroit, right now, has just been put into state receivership or it's about to be," Lane said. "I wonder if there is no role for him in the restructuring of Detroit. He'd be the perfect person to do it. He has got the expertise, he's a hometown guy, and he is a kind of a political free agent at this point. That is the kind of thing that he could, I think, contribute in the future."
In rebuttal, they quoted Eric Boehert of Media Matters, who I like but who mostly just took a gratuitous shot at Romney's presidential campaign. A lot of people have commented on the paternalistic attitude of state government towards Detroit. How about the paternalistic attitude of the national media in talking about Romney as Detroit's turnaround guy in the first place. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen because it would never work. It would never work because the people of Detroit would legitimately go apeshit at having Romney made a de facto emperor of the city after the people of Detroit rejected him overwhelmingly to be their president while also overwhemingly rejecting P.A. 4. I have no idea who will be named as Detroit's emergency manager. Odds are pretty good that it'll be someone I've never heard of. I can predict with some certainty that Romney has as much chance of being named Detroit's emergency manager as does the recently-unemployed Joseph Ratzinger. |
