The Long Goodbye

Of his tenure at Bain said Mitt Romney,
The presumptive Republican nom'nee:
"I was much too engrossed
To give up my post
While Olympian tasks were upon me."

In the American political world right now, the one question that obsesses the Presidential campaigns is: when did Mitt Romney leave Bain Capital, the private equity firm of which he was founder, sole owner and CEO? The answer appears not to be as simple as either Mr. Romney's campaign or that of President Barack Obama would have you believe. That is to say, Mr. Romney did not execute a clean break from his firm before it was involved in politically inconvenient outsourcing transactions, though he was clearly preoccupied with the turnaround of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics from Febuary 1999 onwards. While the management of the firm was certainly left to his colleagues during the 3-year long winter of discontent, it remains an awkward task to disavow the actions of a firm of which one was the officially registered chief executive.