Strict constructionist (via), I’m sure:
“I’d like to have a provision in the Constitution that in addition to the age of the president and the citizenship of the president and the birth place of the president being set by the Constitution, I’d like it also to say that the president has to spend at least three years working in business before he could become president of the United States.” — Mitt Romney, on Tuesday
4tehlulz
Maybe he should quit the campaign to work full time for this important change.
russ
maybe we could add “attractive looking and polite” also while were at it, just sayen’
Waynski
I propose that all Presidents wear their underwear on the outside.
Kent
There goes the two best Republican presidents in history….Lincoln and Eisenhower. Of course we’d still have Herbert Hoover so there’s that.
trex
And I’d ask Romney why? The United States of America is a country, not a business. And what business was General George Washington in again? And what if for business experience you spent three years working for AIG or Enron or Global Crossings?
On second thought I’d just tell Romney to fvck off.
rlrr
Since I’ve been underwhelmed by past Presidents touting their business experience, I see no need for such an amendment.
Clime Acts
What an ass.
different-church-lady
@Waynski: …so we can check.
Linnaeus
Hell, let’s just dispose of that whole democracy thing and just let corporations appoint our political leaders. What could go wrong?
Seriously – and I mean no offense to our solid merchant class – why is “being in business” considered a qualification for doing pretty much anything in this country?
chopper
the president should also have a law degree, since his job involves enacting congress’s laws. also he should have military experience, since he’s the CiC.
keep talking, mittens.
The Other Chuck
How about requiring three years of community organizing?
What a dumbass gaffe machine. He makes Biden look like the model of self-control.
chopper
notice he didn’t say ‘the private sector’, since obama worked at a law firm and taught at a private university.
jrg
This is good news for John McCain!
Teresa
Next it will be must wear superman underwear.
I don’t think Mittsy has actually thought a day in his life. He yacks a lot about nonsensical but has yet to show that he has the abilities to think.
different-church-lady
@trex:
The business of kicking redcoat ASS.
trex
A better suggestion is to have an amendment requiring all business execs to spend six years working in either the Peace Corps or AmeriCorps before assuming their jobs to learn just who it is they’re screwing when they perpetrate socially and environmentally destructive policies. If we’re going to change the Constitution we may as well get some positive social benefit.
Steve
I think all presidential candidates should have to spend at least three years being white.
Linnaeus
@Kent:
Lincoln had a private law practice before going into politics, so I’m sure that would qualify him in Romney’s eyes.
ETA: Not before going into politics, but certainly before being president.
different-church-lady
@trex:
Wherever there’s thats to be fixed for you, thats will be fixed for you.
Quaker in a Basement
…and the Constitution should also say that the president’s first name has to start with M and be four letters long and rhyme with ‘witt.’
jl
I read on TPM that Mitt is in trouble with the GOP nutjobs because he named a moderate to head his transition team.
If the GOP plan to win is manipulation of the turnout, silly garbage like this will be an official problem that Mitt has to handle.
Will Mitt blow it off, cave, or do something weird, or gaffe it?
If I can remember about for it more than a minute I will follow this closely, and send in a red alert tip to Blitz over the intertubes.
David in NY
By my definition of “business” I don’t think Mitt would qualify? A hedge fund is a “business”? I think not.
Now, Mitt’s Dad was another story … He actually was in business.
Ash Can
Reason #3,847,956 Mitt Romney is a horse’s ass.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
and i think all hollywood actors should spend time working in porn before they are allowed to get a sag card.
rlrr
@Quaker in a Basement:
That disqualifies Willard Romney…
Kent
@Linnaeus:
Linnaeus….Willard didn’t say “working in the private sector” What he said was “working in business” If we’re being strict constructionists, the founders would have seen law, business, medicine, government, education, and the military as separate. If anything in the private sector is considered “business” then Obama’s time teaching at the private University of Chicago would also be considered “business”
MattF
Liar, coward, plutocrat, sanctimonious, soulless pr*ck with a Daddy Problem… and now… fucking idiot.
Yutsano
@jl:
Cave. He thinks he needs the wingnuts to win, and anything that causes them displeasure will have to be purged. This of course just shows the wingnuts that Willard can’t be trusted to act for their interests.
FlipYrWhig
@David in NY: Exactly. I want “a business” to involve making things or providing services, not this fictitious flimflam about pooling money to make deals involving businesses other people have launched.
rlrr
@MattF:
In other words, a Republican Presidential candidate.
patrick II
@Kent:
I assume you are not counting failed businesses, otherwise GWB would also qualify.
Nemesis
Washington crossed the Deleware for COMMERCE, bitches. Get some.
burnspbesq
I’d like to see what sort of strained definitions they would have to come up with in order for what Romney did to qualify as “work” and for Bain Capital to qualify as a “business.”
Tokyokie
Do my summers as a teenager mowing lawns count? I’m guessing I worked a lot harder doing that than Mitt ever has in his whole fucking life.
Roger Moore
Come out and say what you really want, Mitt. Your party wants an amendment repealing the 20th Century.
kc
I guess that leaves Ann Romney out.
Cargo
We should amend the Constitution so that all Presidential candidates have to be white male Republicans to qualify!
David in NY
Hmmm …
burnspbesq
@trex:
Why limit that to business execs? Why not have universal national service? You can do it in the military or in some civilian service, but you gotta go for three years, either right after high school or right after college.
FlipYrWhig
@kc: Mitt Romney never worked a day in his life! At least if you define “work” as something that leaves your hands dirty with something other than filthy lucre.
JasonF
I’ll make you a deal, Mitt — I’ll support your stupid amendment if you’ll support an amendment that says a President must spend an equal amount of time living at or below the poverty line.
JenJen
Mittens is apparently unaware that our Presidents that had a business background were all, for the most part, miserable failures.
Hey Mitt! George W. Bush was a businessman. I win!
Scott S.
Do all of us just get to invent new amendments to the Constitution now? Fine, I’d like an amendment requiring Mitt Romney to be placed on a rocketship and fired into the sun. OUR FOUNDING FATHERS WOULD DEMAND IT, OYEZ OYEZ
Linnaeus
@Kent:
Fair point, though I suspect Willard would “adjust” his statement when faced with that fact.
FlipYrWhig
@burnspbesq: Sounds like big-government indoctrination camps to me. Thus, I’m all for it.
Mike Lamb
This honestly rivals Cain’s 9-9-9 plan in sheer stupidity.
eemom
Not least among the many unexpected pleasures I experienced in my weekend away from the intertrons was forgetting there was such a thing as Mitt Romney.
Lev
@David in NY: John Lanchester defined it thusly: a business exists solely to make money. An industry exists to create SOMETHING, and money is the byproduct. So in his book I.O.U. (which I highly recommend), he talks about how Wall Street/City of London goons got their fingers into the real economy and essentially ruined the concept of industry, turning everything into a business, where the bottom line is all that matters. In fact, most people think that’s just the normal way of operating. It’s not, or at least it doesn’t have to be.
I guess I’m saying that I don’t want that sort of businessman (which W. M. Romney so totally is) prospering at all, or holding any public office.
FlipYrWhig
@JenJen: George W. Bush was even less of a businessman, though, because he was purely a figurehead and front man, while Romney made — and I have to think gleefully — actual decisions about who continued and who collapsed.
MattF
OT, but worth reading. George Soros on the Euro crisis:
georgesoros.com/interviews-speeches/entry/remarks_at_the_festival_of_economics_trento_italy/
Bruce S
I’d like to see that, plus three years either working at Foxconn in China or as a farm-worker in the US, three years trying to get a job in one of the regions with highest unemployment stats having no more than community college on one’s resume, and three years either teaching school or working in a soup kitchen in one of our inner cities.
I think at that point I would feel like the prospective candidate had sufficient understanding of the modern economy to function as President of the US effectively. Surely not too much to ask.
Roger Moore
@JenJen:
You are referring to an unperson, so Mitt will happily ignore your point.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: IOW, Bush didn’t have the sheer pleasure in being a Captain of Industry that Mitt clearly does. Bush was a slacker. Romney is a zealot.
dnl
Can some statistician kill several days figuring out whether being in business before being a governor/president makes any difference in improving the US/state economy (relative to other states or other presidents in an appropriate maner).
I’m guessing based on Mittmentum in MA, that there is either no correlation or that former businessmen make things worse.
jl
@David in NY:
Truman’s Kansas City haberdashery went bankrupt.
I think he eventually paid off all the debts, which demonstrates a business morality that would today render him unacceptable as a business leader president of these great United States.
Amir Khalid
What means “working in business”? Does Mitt mean any private sector job, like flipping burgers at Pizza Hut? Or being self-employed? Or does he mean some kind of supervisory, managerial or board-room level experience at a midsize ot large corporation? The higher you go up that scale, the more people get excluded from eligibility to run for President. And where would such a rule leave, say a career military officer like Ike?
FlipYrWhig
@Lev: Yes yes yes. I need to read that book this summer. I’m all over that reinvention of capitalism into arcane money-pushing bullshit.
Valdivia
Beatles?
Martin
@Kent: True. But if that were pointed out, then we’d go down the slippery slope of “I meant private sector. No, I meant finance. No, I meant private equity… No, the only person who could possibly be qualified to be President is me.”
MikeJ
Saint Reagan worked as president of a labour union. Would he be qualified?
Maude
There aren’t provisions in the Constitution.
Does he think he means an amendment to the Constitution?
Does he think at all?
GWB had an MBA. Lotta good that did.
Quaker in a Basement
@rlrr: …or Millard! His name can also too rhyme with Millard.
Roger Moore
@Maude:
Yes. He thinks very hard about what the audience he’s talking to wants to hear.
Martin
@Amir Khalid: I think the wingnut rule is “The only people qualified to be president are those who were previously employed in positions capable of destroying the economy.” So, Jaime Dimon and Bernie Madoff are obviously the most qualified people possible.
Ash Can
And in other news, the schmuck who talked about throwing acid on female Congressional Dems has resigned. This was the right thing for him and Nan Hayworth’s campaign to do. Now if only the National Review would cut Jonah Goldberg loose for advocating that conservatives beat up young adults.
jl
Here is Mitt’s Wikiquote page.
Mitt Romne
en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mitt_Romney
Hey, you dang kids, let’s play Balloon Juice internet Jeopardy!
Catgory: Jinks Hi and Lo!
” He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!”
On a serious note concerning the preservation of the wit and wisdom of Mitt, I can’t find his inspirational quote “I’ve made a lot of money”. Anyone know how you add entries to Wikiquote? My source is the Colbert Report, so it is rock solid sourced.
J.D. Rhoades
Jobs before they were President:
cnn.com/2011/LIVING/02/23/cb.jobs.before.president/index.html
huffingtonpost.com/kathleen-maher/top-10-presidential-jobs_b_933221.html
jon
Why the fuck do businessmen get a special requirement? I want all Presidents to be poor, rich, in the country, abroad, rural, urban, soldiers, park rangers, policemen, jurists, doctors, accountants, readers, thinkers, jovial, experienced with drugs, to have suffered significant losses, humble, proud, intellectuals, scientists, engineers, historians, and know foreign languages. A couple of years in business can make a decent middle manager whose job can get shipped to somewhere cheaper. Big deal. I’ve been a supervisor at a state job for about five years, so I can run the billion-dollar department now?
How’s about we keep things where they are: 35 and older and gets more votes in more places than the other guy?
jl
@Amir Khalid:
‘ What means “working in business”? ‘
I think Mitt means where you get to fire people.’
And be able cage any bucks not closely watched, and not have to give any back.
That is the kind of business experience he means.
Other micky mouse stuff doesn’t count
Librarian
Actually, George Washington was quite a businessman. The Mount Vernon plantation was a large establishment which grew several crops, including wheat, from which he made flour for which he was famous, and of course hemp. And there was also a distillery. And he was also a big investor in western lands, which was why he supported the building of the Potomac and Ohio canal.
jon
@Amir Khalid: Flipping burgers at Pizza Hut? Not until you finish cleaning the sneeze guard at the Applebee’s salad bar, mister!
Davis X. Machina
I think you should have owned your own business that folded in a recession. Gives you a certain perspective. C.f. Harry Truman.
hitchhiker
He thinks this is a crowd-pleasing line, and maybe to the crowds that are capable of being pleased by someone whose connection to actual workers is nonexistent, it will probably work just fine. The subtext they will hear is, Dude, the reason we’re all in so much trouble is that we don’t listen to businessmen enough.
For the rest of us, it comes across like this: Dude, we rich people want more of the national wealth. Hand it over.
Valdivia
as to the substance. Maybe while he is at it they Constitution should say that the president can’t have inherited any money, needs to be a real self made man, by his boot straps kind of Galtian job creator.
Shoot me now.
MattF
@jon: Well, we could add a ‘not Kenyan’ amendment. Wouldn’t actually change anything, needless to say, but it would make Donald Trump’s combover stand up and salute.
Davis X. Machina
Milt Romney’s success in politics is proof that no one is reading or teaching Babbitt any more.
Roger Moore
@jon:
BECAUSE SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!
ETA: Actual wingnut logic.
scav
But don’t they also need a deep, nay even genetic understanding of government service? Should we also be requiring their father be governor or better O ye oracle of qualifications Mittster?
ETA: But then what about CIC there dude? Military service mandatory or not? mmm?
shortstop
@trex: Heh.
@Roger Moore: Exactly so.
The Other Chuck
Nothing in the constitution requires being human. Whew, dodged that bullet, Mitt.
Chyron HR
@Amir Khalid:
He means you need to have the arcane lore necessary to decipher the mystic secrets of the “Bal-anz Sheeet”.
The Moar You Know
And Reagan’s CEO experience was…?
Roger Moore
@scav:
Does being a minister in Kenya count? Honestly, though, I think we need to allow homines novi in our political process, though maybe we need to bring back the concept of a cursus honorum to keep idiot businesspeople from thinking they can jump right in at the top.
Alison
@kc: Going by Mitt’s wording, it leaves all women out:
What a tool.
chonchito
I don’t understand why the Obama campaign isn’t pointing out that the Bush administration’s main guys were all CEOs prior to joining the administration. Wasn’t Bush the CEO president? Or was it MBA President? Anyway, point out Dick “Halliburton” Cheney and Don Rumsfeld CEO of GD Searle and General Instrument couldn’t run squat. We already had a run government like a business administration and they were a disaster. Has anyone else noticed this?
4ndyman
This is just the next step toward getting an actual corporation elected president.
Heliopause
Perhaps if this Presidential test had been in the Constitution we’d have been spared the Bush years.
gbear
My requirement would be that every candidate should spend one year working as a clerk in a convenience store. I learned so much about my neighborhood in one year of working at the local ‘Stop-‘N-Rob’.
jl
Somebody who knows how the Wiki works needs to put his best quotes in there.
The ‘I don’t remember what my position is, but whatever it was, I stand by it’ quote, not there. The ‘Michigan tress are the just the right height’ quote, not there.
Some of his famous inspirational quotes are there, though:
I like being able to fire people who provide services to me.
I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love.
I’m not concerned about the very poor.
300baud
Only if we include the mandate that the president also has to have worked a randomly chosen minimum-wage, manual-labor job for 3 years and survived on a poverty-level income during that time.
As a business type myself, I agree that there are a number of politicians who don’t seem to understand how market economies work, and I wish they did have actual business experience. I think everybody should run a small business at some point in their lives, even if it’s only a summer lemonade stand.
But that’s not because I think business is particularly scared. I think the best way to understand something is to live it, and I think people should understand as much as possible.
Ken
@Amir Khalid: Does Mitt mean any private sector job, like flipping burgers? Or does he mean some kind of […] managerial experience?
Flipping burgers and greeting at Wal-Mart are managerial positions. By classifying the workers that way, the company doesn’t have to pay overtime.
scav
@Roger Moore: They’re big on term limits: let’s extend them to families. (Didn’t the Venetians do something along these lines?)
J.W. Hamner
So… kind of like the requirements for getting into an MBA program? Base on some MBAs of note I’m gonna say that’s probably not a great criteria.
Roger Moore
@Alison:
Freudian slip.
Raven
@Amir Khalid: Only enlisted personnel should be eligible. There is NOTHING more dangerous that a 2nd LT with a map!
Roger Moore
@jl:
Wow. How very Rumsfeldian.
Kent
Wouldn’t this also eliminate the Republican demigod Ronald Reagan? He was an actor and a union rep before going into politics. Where in his bio does he have 3 years of experience working in business?
Roger Moore
@Kent:
There’s no business like show business!
ETA: No business I know.
RalfW
What a turd in a punchbowl that thought is.
There was a time in this country when (ahem) conservatives thought the Constitution was a sacred, even g-d inspired document.
The ascendency of filthy lucre into the very heart of Republicanism is driving conservatism to some unrecognizable place. This is just, on it’s face abhorrent.
joes527
@Raven:
A software engineer with a screwdriver.
Roger Moore
@Raven:
A CEO with a golden parachute.
estamm
@Kent: Actually, Lincoln ran a store for a few years (and was a failure at it). It would rule out Palin, so there is that in its favor.
piratedan
cmon now, Willard is a plenty savvy businessman. he’s in the business of taking businesses that once performed services and made products and turned the assets of those organizations into quick profits and tax write offs for those of his ilk. Then he returned those people back into the workforce for reassignment and readjustment of their personal agendas. He’s like the solyent green of businessmen.
PurpleGirl
@Librarian: Washington also trained as surveyor, which he worked at for several years. Ol’ Georgie was quite the entrepreneur.
RalfW
The smallness, the pettiness of this man’s vision for America makes me recoil in horror.
15 minutes after first reading and I’m still flabbergasted by how narrow, self-dealing and third-rate Romney’s mind is.
Just wow.
estamm
@David in NY: I don’t believe Lincoln ever filed for bankruptcy. He actually paid off all of his debts. (He referred to it as ‘the national debt’ since it was so huge. But he paid everyone in full.)
Bubblegum Tate
What a dumbass thing to say. Not coincidentally, it’s also a great bit of pandering to the wingnut masses.
Judas Escargot, Your Postmodern Neighbor
Okie Dokie, Mitt. But on one condition: Every CEO must have at least three years’ experience in government/military/public service.
The Beauty of Symmetry, and all that…
Mike E
@Valdivia: You better free your mind instead.
The Other Chuck
@Roger Moore:
Why was Freud wearing a slip, anyway?
FlipYrWhig
@piratedan: Coroporations are made out of people, my friend!
The Other Chuck
@piratedan:
Soylent Green is people. I’m not sure the same can be said of Romney.
burritoboy
The only Presidents who have been real big-time business execs as their primary careers was Hoover, one of the least successful Presidents ever, and George HW Bush, a mediocre President at best. Most Presidents have been small businessmen in that they were owners of large farms or were running their own law firms (most quite small compared to the law firms of today).
PurpleGirl
Reagan may have been a union rep and then president of SAG but during his tenure he gave a rule waiver to one agents’ company so that they could represent both actors and producers at the same time. Completely changed the dynamics of movie/TV making. And that action made Reagan beloved by the corporate elites and helped make him rich. It put him on the corporate rubber-chicken dinner circuit.
quannlace
He stared a brewery at Mount Vernon. Oh, wait, that was after the Presidency. Never mind.
joes527
@Librarian: Don’t forget the whole buying and selling of people* thing. That should get him entrepreneur credit up the wazoo.
* and yes, I know GW’s relationship to slavery was very complex for a man of his time and place, but in the end he couldn’t reconcile himself with letting go of assets without compensation ’till after he was dead.
Auldblackjack
Does my year as a paperboy count Mittens?
I’d also like to see a provision in the Constitution that mandates presidential candidates be evalualed for Antisocial Personality Disorder and sociopathy. How is the family dog doing these days Willard?
Tuffy
Mitt got a double whammy by mentioning “birth place of the president”, clearly a wink n’ reach-around to the birfer movement.
Mike E
@PurpleGirl: And employing attys to divorce Jane Wyman, amirite?
r€nato
I am very disappointed it took 31 comments for someone to mention GW Bush’s stellar track record as a businessman, which totally qualified him to be president.
Step up your game, bitches!
Comrade Dread
The purpose of a Federal Government:
The purpose of a business:
To make money.
These two objectives do not relate to one another.
Based on the job of the Federal government, it would be better to require a candidate have past experience as a:
1. Defense attorney doing pro bono work and then as a district attorney.
2. Military
3. Charity worker
Phoenician in a time of Romans
@Linnaeus:
Seriously – and I mean no offense to our solid merchant class – why is “being in business” considered a qualification for doing pretty much anything in this country?
Because idiots – and I mean every offense to the wingnut class – think being a CEO is JUST like being a politician, and a business is JUST like a country…
hojo
Reagan originally ran for office backed by a senior GE executive and a group of wealthy So. California entrepreneurs headed by a guy who owned an auto dealership.
Now the business guys want to incorporate the political front man. Mitt is the perfect Chief Executive / Public Relations President.
28 Percent
George Washington was a (very rich!) farmer and soldier. Does being a farmer count as being “in business?”
John Adams was a lawyer.
Thomas Jefferson was a farmer, and after his death his daughter had to sell everything he had owned at an auction held on the front porch of Monticello to pay off her father’s debts.
Jackson was a soldier
Lincoln was a lawyer
Ulysses S Grant would still qualify, from working in his father’s store for a while, but I’m not sure that’s the kind of example Rmoney had in mind.
I don’t know if Romney would count Harding as having been “in business” or not, since he was a self-made newspaper owner. It was a business, but it actually produced something, so I’m not sure whether or not that counts by Romney’s definition. Anyway, same problem with him as with Grant – not really an aspirational example.
Calvin Coolidge was a lawyer and career politician.
So was Roosevelt.
Nixon was a sailor, lawyer and politician.
If being a farmer counts for George Washington, it should count for Jimmy Carter.
Ronald Reagan was an actor, union boss and politician.
George W. Bush made a career out of losing other people’s money.
Personally, I think we’d do better to add a constitutional amendment requiring that all future presidents be selected in a nationwide belching contest. Or, better yet, take everybody in congress and put them in Thunderdome, last one alive gets to be President.
Elie
I believe that we should have an amendment that prevents a priest or prelate of a church or other religious organization or belief system, from holding the office of President. Separation of church and state, folks. I do not believe in theocratic rule and the constitution is pretty clear about the separation of church and state.
Elie
@Elie:
That is unless Romney wants to say that being a Bishop in the Mormon church means nothing…
Comrade Dread
I will second that motion if you make the survivor fight a bear and the winner of THAT fight becomes president.
danimal
So, Gov. Romney, why do you support a constitutional amendment barring the likes of President Eisenhower from the Presidency?
BTW, does being an author count as business work? Maybe Obama didn’t spend three years writing, publishing and promoting his book sales, but I’m guessing that he did.
Jebediah
@Comrade Dread:
President Grizzly Adams!
Boots Day
Someone should ask him if he voted for McCain last time out, or if he thought McCain was hopelessly unqualified to be president.
EIGRP
@joes527: Account manager with his/her mouth open?
Omnes Omnibus
@Raven: I take it you have never met a CPT with a plan.
Prairie Logic
Maybe already been mentioned… but…
* Unless, of course, he has served in the military. Then, nevermind!
The Dangerman
@jl:
Since when does one have a transition team prior to one winning?
Villago Delenda Est
I’d like to make it a qualification that the President not be an obnoxious rich asshole.
So much for OvenMitt.
stratplayer
Three years in business, three years surviving on the minimum wage with no health insurance, and three years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit. I’d support that.
Oh, and three years being gay.
kideni
One positive outcome of this is that Paul Ryan wouldn’t be able to be president.
RalfW
@jl:
I just popped over to TPM and this is the blow job they give to Romney on the side:
Excuse me? You’re saying that Romney is a smart, serious ex-governor too? Really? W.T.Frunk?
mclaren
Even better, insert a constitutional amendment requiring the president to work as a money-changer in the temple before he’s eligible to run.