THE DAILY BLADE: Former MA Gov. and venture capitalist Mitt Romney and former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain are the only two candidates vying for the White House from either party who have significant business experience. Romney’s business background is Wall Street – he was a turnaround specialist with leveraged buyout firm Bain Capital, which bought distressed companies and sometimes sold them for parts. Cain’s is Main Street – he was a turnaround manager, who repositioned foundering companies to make them profitable. These two articles clarify what this means – and illustrate the decision-making style that Romney and Cain would bring to the White House, if elected.

New York magazine explains how Romney and other business consultants who “traveled the circuit of American business in the late seventies and early eighties” were able to improve clients’ operations – but only to the extent that their recommendations were adopted. The paradigm-shifting solution: “If managers could secure financing to run their own companies, they might be able to build a better corporation, one that delivered stronger returns to its owners”:

You could view this idea at least two different ways. One was as a chance to change the way American business is run. Another was as a business opportunity to exploit. Romney saw both. …

By the time Mitt Romney left Bain Capital for good, in 1999, American CEOs looked very different from the predecessors he had met in the seventies – the genial paternalists, spending their careers at a single company. More and more, they were pure meritocrats – well-educated, well-compensated, moving frequently between jobs and industries, trained to look ruthlessly for efficiency everywhere. They look a great deal more, in other words, like Mitt Romney.

During the years that Romney was amassing his fortune – with Domino’s Pizza in his portfolio, BTW – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis-St. Paul) reports that “[w]ith flair and hard work, [Cain] turned around Pillsbury's struggling Philadelphia Burger King region and revived a near-dead Godfather's Pizza:

"Herman was far and away the best I've worked for in terms of getting a team together, sharing a vision and accomplishing the goals. And nothing diverted him," [said Frank Taylor, a recently retired Burger King financial executive whom Cain hired as his regional controller in 1983].

Cain also shared the wealth. When Burger King distributed $50,000 apiece to the regional vice presidents as reward for good performance in 1985, most of the regional bosses spent it on a trip to a posh resort for themselves and other managers and spouses. The enlisted troops got a dinner. Cain took everybody in his office, including administrative staff, on the same three-day reward cruise, Taylor recalled. …

"Herman was very quantitative and analytical, but he demanded that everybody be engaged and every employee must be appreciated and respected," [said George Mileusnic, a former Pillsbury executive, now a Twin Cities consultant].

These snippets from the New York and Star Tribune articles also describe the management styles of the two men:

[Bain Capital] reflected some aspects of Romney’s own personality: his mania for detail and for process. He was a cautious executive. "Mitt was always worried that things weren’t going to work out -- he never took big risks," one of his colleagues told me. "Everything was very measurable. I think Mitt had a tremendous amount of insecurity and fear of failure." Romney never worked from any particular "macro theme," any philosophy of how the economy was moving. What he employed instead was an exhausting habit of playing devil’s advocate, proposing sequential objections to a particular project or idea, until eventually, through a kind of Darwinian process, consensus was reached. "I never viewed Mitt as very decisive," says one of his Bain Capital colleagues. "The idea was that if there’s enough argument around an issue by bright people, ultimately the data will prevail." Romney may have been, as another early Bain Capital partner puts it, a "very case-by-case, reactive thinker," but he was also an extremely hard worker and an egalitarian boss. He inspired intense loyalty, and there are still members of his circle who describe him as a perfect CEO.

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"I worked with [Cain] fairly closely at Burger King," recalled Mileusnic. "He was good strategically and good with people, including working long hours in Burger King stores to get that bottom-up experience. He had about 500 stores in that Philadelphia region and he did a great job."

Impressed, Jeff Campbell, the head of Pillsbury's restaurant operations, put Cain in charge of Godfather's Pizza, a then-struggling chain that Pillsbury acquired when it bought an Omaha restaurant consolidator that also was a big franchisee of Burger Kings.

Godfather's was started by an entrepreneur in the 1970s but slid after it was acquired by a big Burger King corporate franchisee and waylaid by a tired menu, demoralized employees and lousy results. Campbell gave the 40-year-old Cain a year to right Godfather's, make a buck, or shut it down. …

Along with his analytical skills, Cain brought an entrepreneurial fervor to the hurried turnaround at Godfather's in 1986-87. He listened, asked questions and acted, including closing stores, shifting people and even cooking and testing new products in the company's kitchen.

Both men brought a formidable intellect to their careers, but Cain also had a heart whereas Romney comes off as soulless.

The Definition of Chutzpah: Part XIV

With the Obama administration suing cash-strapped state and local governments passing laws aimed at curbing illegal immigration so as to reduce expenditures that provide for their upkeep – such as food stamps, public housing, and healthcare – it was only a matter of time before anchor babies demanded due process, providing yet another incentive for foreign nationals to spit on our sovereignty and our laws.

Miami Dade College sophomore Wendy Ruiz – who receives financial aid to defray the $5,000 difference in the out-of-state tuition she pays because her parents are illegals – and five other college-age anchor babies born in FL are now involved in a class-action lawsuit, CBSTampa.com reports:

“It’s so unfair,” she told CBS Tampa. “I was born here. This makes no sense.”

Miriam Haskell of the Southern Poverty Law Center is working on the case.

“We believe strongly that young people … should be treated equally, and have a right to access education,” Haskell stated to CBS Tampa. “(This policy) is deterring not just Wendy and the four other plaintiffs, but scores of others in Florida.” …

“This policy violates the federal constitution. This is not a state statute,” she said. “It violates the equal protection clause, which guarantees equal rights for all United States citizens. The constitution doesn’t make exceptions based on who the parents are.”

In the meantime, Ruiz is doing her best to continue with her education despite the thousands of dollars she must now pay in tuition costs.

“I have financial aid … (but) the rest I pay out of pocket,” she said. “During the week I work at the school in administrative services, and on the weekends I tutor, I babysit … I’ve been a waiter, and had other jobs.”

To make time for her jobs, Ruiz said that she has assumed part-time student status, and is presently taking eight credits in the form of three courses.

For the record, The Stiletto worked her way through undergrad (she went to school full time and worked part time) and grad school (she worked full time and went to night school). If The Stiletto could do get her education without making a federal case out of it, so can Ruiz. The state should cut Ruiz and the others a deal: If those members of your family who are in the U.S. illegally go back to their country of origin, we will charge you in-state tuition. Chances are, it will be a bargain for FL taxpayers.