Anderson Cooper sounded a very skeptical note about Mitt Romney on his Tuesday show.
Cooper used his "Keeping Them Honest" segment to examine Romney's leading theme about his candidacy: that his private sector experience gives him the tools to create millions of jobs. Romney unveiled a jobs plan on Tuesday that, in the words of the Associated Press, seeks to "reduce regulations and taxes on companies, sanction China over its currency practices and weaken the clout of labor unions." Romney says the plan will create 11.5 million jobs.
"We did some checking on Mr. Romney's repeated claims that his private sector experience uniquely prepares him as a job creator," Cooper said. "He says that a lot." he played clip after clip of Romney saying this, including one where he said that "tens of thousands of jobs" were created as a result of investments that his company, Bain Capital, had made.
"That figure, tens of thousands, is vague," Cooper pointed out. "And when we asked the campaign for specifics to back it up, we got no reply. In addition, some of Governor Romney's investments, while running Bain, are such that putting a number on jobs created is downright impossible."
As an example, Cooper mentioned Staples, which Romney put $2 million dollars into and which now employs 90,000 people.
"Should Governor Romney be credited with creating all 90,000 or just only a small fraction?" Cooper wondered. He also noted that much of Romney's private sector life consisted of laying people off to maximize profits, and played Ted Kennedy's famous 1994 ad which featured workers laid off by Romney's company speaking out against him.