The business candidate, part 1

Something that I heard several times over the past week was, with the growing concerns about the economy, the Mitt Romney campaign should get a boost. John McCain is far more focused on the war against Islamo-fascistic-terrorism, or whatever (and if he does follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, hey, just push him in, don't bring him back), and that topic is losing the interest of voters who are afraid of losing their homes or suffering a recession.

Mitt Romney, however, is a focused businessman, a CEO of a famed consulting company, the man who brought the Winter Olympics to Utah in a fiscally responsible way. He can handle the economic challenges that face us because of his vast experience.

This is yet more evidence that journalists simply don't understand business. Time after time, we read stories in the business section that read like warmed-over press releases. I think that happens thusly: The young reporter pulls up to the office building, gets out of his car, and is met before he even hits the lobby by an attractive PR person. He's taken to a conference room, given coffee and donuts, and told about all the great things the company is doing. Then he meets the head of Marketing, the head of Finance, the head of Manufacturing, each of whom takes him on a tour of their respective domains and talks about the innovative strategies that they've deployed. Then comes lunch with the CEO, either in the executive dining room, or in the CEO's spacious office. There the seven-figure executive explains to the young reporter how this company will change the world. Lunch over, the reporter is released just in time to get back to the newsroom and type up notes for tomorrow's story.

There is no perspective, no attempt at balancing the story. But the story is seen as journalistically neutral because the reporter injects no opinions. If a newspaper ran a puff piece like this about a person, it would belong in the features section. In the business section, however, it's just solid reporting.

We see this in the broadcast media as well. I enjoy Charlie Rose's show, I find him a solid interviewer, but he is a lot less engaged in economic topics than in the war in Iraq, or the political horse race, or college basketball.

Why is this? For some reason, economics is seen as a forbidding topic, one that the non-specialist (meaning most reporters) cannot possibly understand, and it's seen as grindingly uninteresting. Its importance is obvious; economic matters underlie almost every domestic issue, and are increasingly wrapped up in international affairs. But our journalists simply won't do the work necessary to get up to speed.

Why is this important in the political campaign? The simplistic assumption is that Romney, erstwhile CEO, will know how to get the country moving, will make us competitive, can solve the problems of a globalized world. Tomorrow I'll explain why this is bunkum.