NEW YORK -- CNN senior political analyst David Gergen defended Mitt Romney this week against the Obama campaign's charges that the presumptive Republican nominee hasn't been honest about his tenure at Bain Capital -- a private-equity firm the former presidential adviser-turned-TV pundit knows something about.
On Monday, Gergen acknowledged having a "past relationship with the top partners at Bain that is both personal and financial" -- a disclosure that the Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan suggested is "what's wrong with the press corps" and raised questions about Gergen's role in analyzing Romney's experience at the firm.
"I have worked with them in support of nonprofit organizations such as City Year," Gergen wrote. "I have given a couple of paid speeches for Bain dinners, as I have for many other groups. I was on the board of a for-profit childcare company, Bright Horizons, that was purchased by Bain Capital. It was a transaction with financial benefits for all board members and shareholders, including me."
Gergen, while acknowledging his "bias" on Monday, wrote how he's "come to admire and like the leaders of Bain Capital" because the firm "stands out for the respect in which it is generally held and for the generous philanthropy of some of its partners."
The Romney campaign is facing a media firestorm over the candidate's ties to Bain after February 1999, when the campaign maintains he gave up involvement in management and investment decisions to run the Olympics. Reporters at The Huffington Post, among other outlets, have challenged the campaign's claims, while revealing Romney's continued ties to Bain through 2002, including signed SEC documents confirming his position as Bain's sole owner and chief executive and sworn testimony that he continued sitting on Bain-affiliated boards of companies for years after the Olympics.
But Gergen said he also looked into the matter, noting that "when the story first broke Thursday in the Boston Globe suggesting that Romney and Bain had fudged, CNN asked if I would do some reporting." And Gergen's Bain sources, speaking anonymously, backed up the campaign's claims, thus leading the CNN analyst to argue the Obama team's charges aren't supported by facts.
Full story: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/18/david-gergen-bain-capital-cnn_n_1682257.html
LP - Everything wrong with the American media, American politics, and American business. I still remember when he was on public television the non-business channel.
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