Romney met with at least 250 of the top bankers, speculators and financial manipulators in the world -- including representatives of Barclays, the bank that recently paid almost $500 million in fines after its officials were charged with providing false information to interest-rate regulators.
Of course Mitt Romney's arrival in London was awkward. Mitt Romney's arrival anywhere is awkward.
But don't think that Romney's jaunt across the pond has been a complete disaster.
Aside from some public relations missteps, he has accomplished precisely what he set out to do.
Admittedly, the missteps have been serious.
Romney's bumpkin-in-chief beginning in London was epic: he suggested the Brits had done a poor job organizing the Olympics, violated international security protocols and struggled to keep the names of his hosts straight. British's Sun newspaper, a particularly conservative tabloid, went so far as to dub him "Mitt the Twit" on a front page that the Brits -- and plenty of American Democrats -- will dub a "keeper."
What with an aide making cryptic comments about how Romney has a better understanding than President Obama of "Anglo Saxon heritage," nothing about the presumptive Republican presidential nominee's step onto the global stage seemed to go right.
Except, of course, for the real purpose of the trip, which was to collect cash from the most scandal-plagued of London's financial insiders -- and to assure the embattled banksters that he would, if elected, use the power of the presidency to protect them from regulation and oversight.
That task Romney managed with the agility of the "vulture capitalist" described by his Republican primary foes.
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Within the well-guarded confines of London's posh Mandarin Oriental hotel Thursday night, Romney met with at least 250 of the top bankers, speculators and financial manipulators in the world -- including representatives of Barclays, the bank that recently paid almost $500 million in fines after its officials were charged with providing false information to interest-rate regulators.
Most candidates would have shied away from bankers who were, and are, at the center of the LIBOR (London InterBank Offered Rate) rate rigging scandal. But Romney embraced them.
Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond had to withdraw as a co-chair of Romney's London fund-raiser festivities -- after Diamond was forced out of his position and then dragged before a Parliamentary select committee for a round of "what did you know and when did you know it" questioning about the filing of false reports and the manipulation of global markets. Embarrassing? Not really. The no-shame-when-it-comes-to-money-grabbing Romney campaign just made another Barclays insider a co-chair, along with representatives of of Bank of Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone and Wells Fargo Securities--and, of course, Bain Capital Europe.
What was Romney thinking?
First and foremost, he wanted the estimated $2 million in campaign contributions that the global financiers ponied up Thursday night.
But the Republican presidential candidate came to London to offer the the scandal-plagued bankers something in return for the checks that were delivered in increments of as much as $75,000: reassurance that he really is one of them. And that a Romney presidency would serve their interests.
Referring to the signature Wall Street regulatory reform of the Obama presidency, Romney reassured the bankers that: "I'd like to get rid of Dodd Frank and go back and look at regulation piece by piece."
While he couldn't quite get the hang of international diplomacy, Mitt Romney was entirely comfortable standing on foreign soil and promising international bankers that, as president, he would take care of them.
John Nichols, a pioneering political blogger, has written the Online Beat since 1999. His posts have been circulated internationally, quoted in numerous books and mentioned in debates on the floor of Congress.
Nichols writes about politics for The Nation magazine as its Washington correspondent. He is a contributing writer for The Progressive and In These Times and the associate editor of the Capital Times, the daily newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and dozens of other newspapers.
Nichols is a frequent guest on radio and television programs as a commentator on politics and media issues. He was featured in Robert Greenwald's documentary, "Outfoxed," and in the documentaries Joan Sekler's "Unprecedented," Matt Kohn's "Call It Democracy" and Robert Pappas' "Orwell Rolls in his Grave." The keynote speaker at the 2004 Congress of the International Federation of Journalists in Athens, Nichols has been a featured presenter at conventions, conferences and public forums on media issues sponsored by the Federal Communications Commission, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Consumers International, the Future of Music Coalition, the AFL-CIO, the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Newspaper Guild [CWA] and dozens of other organizations.
Nichols is the author of the upcoming book The Genius of Impeachment (The New Press), as well as a critically-acclaimed analysis of the Florida recount fight of 2000, Jews for Buchanan (The New Press) and a best-selling biography of Vice President Dick Cheney, Dick: The Man Who is President (The New Press), which has recently been published in French and Arabic. He edited Against the Beast: A Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire (Nation Books), of which historian Howard Zinn said: "At exactly the time when we need it most, John Nichols gives us a special gift--a collection of writings, speeches, poems, and songs from throughout American history--that reminds us that our revulsion to war and empire has a long and noble tradition in this country."
With Robert W. McChesney, Nichols has co-authored the books, It's the Media, Stupid! (Seven Stories), Our Media, Not Theirs (Seven Stories) and Tragedy and Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy (The New Press). McChesney and Nichols are the co-founders of Free Press, the nation's media-reform network, which organized the 2003 and 2005 National Conferences on Media Reform.
Of Nichols, author Gore Vidal says: "Of all the giant slayers now afoot in the great American desert, John Nichols's sword is the sharpest."