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Topic: iPad

Mitt Romney's kinder, gentler iPad

Summary: Now we can finally rest assured that no matter which party wins the White House, our leaders will benefit daily from outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to underpaid Chinese workers.

David Gewirtz

By for ZDNet Government |

It's sad, really. Political party affiliation has separated two men with otherwise startlingly similar interests and characteristics. I'm talking, of course, about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.

Let's start with their names. How many people, besides Mitt, do you know with the name of Mitt? How many people, besides Barack, do you know with the name of Barack? Don't even get me started on Newt!

Then, there's education. Mitt went to Harvard and got a JD. Barack went to Harvard and got a JD.

On top of that, there's policy initiatives. Mitt is known for RomneyCare and Barack for ObamaCare, which takes many of its basic concepts from the Massachusetts policy.

I know. I know. Health care is an incendiary topic. I'm not really going there, so settle down.

The point is, even though we're going to spend the next five-plus months watching these two gentlemen bicker, they have a lot in common, as well.

For example, they both have iPads.

I wrote, way, waaaay back in 2009 when President Obama first took office, about his fight to keep his BlackBerry. You know that was a long time ago, because back then, someone actually wanted to have a BlackBerry.

See also: Who falls first: RIM or Nokia?

That was back when I was pontificating for CNN, before I moved here to CBS.

See also: What if Barack kept his BlackBerry

See also: Barack gets a superduper BlackBerry

See also: It's official: Barack keeps his BlackBerry

President Obama got his iPad directly from Steve Jobs. In fact, iPads are so popular at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, that you can barely get through a meeting without at least two or three people whipping out their iPads.

So, it was nice to learn that Governor Romney also uses an iPad. Last week, Peggy Noonan had the opportunity to interview Mitt Romney while on the campaign trail.

I always like Peggy Noonan's columns, even if I don't agree with them all. I like her columns, because unlike most of our modern political pundits, she has real perspective that comes from actual experience. She was both President Reagan's and Vice President George H.W. Bush's speechwriter. She wrote some of the best presidential speeches ever given, and is credited for coining the phrase, "a kinder, gentler nation."

As her interview progressed, she happened to touch on the one issue everyone in America is curious about: the MittPad. Noonan reports:

He keeps a campaign journal on his iPad: "Now this is going to make my iPad a subject of potential theft!"

He used to speak his entries, but now he types them on an attached keyboard. "I've kept up pretty well, actually."

He writes every two or three days, so that 10 years from now he can "remember what it was like," but also to capture "the feelings -- the ups the downs, the people I meet and the sense I have about what's going to happen. It's kind of fun to go back and read, as Ann and I do from time to time." Personal journals have proven invaluable in understanding American history, whether written by presidents or privates in the Army. It's through those journals, years later, that we've had the opportunity to see, through the eyes of a single individual, incidents as they happened, from the perspective of someone there at the time.

Obviously, there's a whole lot of miles between now and either Mitt Romney, failed candidate, or Mitt Romney, 45th President of the United States. Either way, those journal entries should prove interesting to historians and wonks alike.

Yes, I know that candidates' personal diaries (on an iPad or not) are not subject to the Presidential Records Act the way notes by a president would be, but the historian in me always hopes for more insight into the minds of our leaders and wannabe leaders, so I always encourage candidates to donate their papers to appropriate libraries, universities, archives, or museums.

Now we can finally rest assured that no matter which party wins the White House, our leaders will benefit daily from outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to underpaid Chinese workers.

See also: Is Apple's suicide factory outsourcing to even cheaper Chinese peasants?

Since Mr. Romney uses a keyboard with his iPad, I wanted to share with some reviews by ZDNet's own maestro of the iPad keyboards, James Kendrick:

Topic: iPad

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51 comments
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  • I love your humour

    Keep-up the good work! :-)
    Restricted_access
    Reply Vote

  • I assume he was given a red model

    [i]President Obama got his iPad directly from Steve Jobs. [/i]

    Followed by this smug exchange:

    President Obama: "What would it take to make iPhones in the United States? Why can't that work come home?"

    Steve Jobs: "Those jobs aren't coming back."

    [i]Now we can finally rest assured that no matter which party wins the White House, our leaders will benefit daily from outsourcing American manufacturing jobs to underpaid Chinese workers.[/i]

    And who is more at fault on this kinder, gentler embodiment of selling-out, GOV or CORPS?
    klumper
    Reply Vote

    • The rest of the story

      <i>"You're headed for a one-term presidency," he told Obama at the start of their meeting, insisting that the administration needed to be more business-friendly. As an example, Jobs described the ease with which companies can build factories in China compared to the United States, where "regulations and unnecessary costs" make it difficult for them.</i>

      What Jobs told the President is that regulation makes agile development very difficult. New plants take too long to build and staff, the engineering labor pool is too limited here (Jobs went on another tangent about the U.S. education system), etc...

      So to answer your question, it would seem to be a combination of Government over regulation and an education system that isn't pumping out the type of workers needed. - Well, if you believe Steve Jobs.

      This information came from the Walter Isaacson biography, but has been widely reported on. Google "Steve Jobs regulation" for more if you like.
      use_what_works_4_U
      Reply Vote

      • All the while

        Modern multinational corporations, like Red Apple, are making obscene, record-breaking profits like never before. What they really want is SLAVES, and more SLAVES. Without home turf RESPONSIBILITY, except unto themselves in their plush corporate suites and billion dollar boardrooms.

        Fill up the company coffers and private bank accounts, hunt for more DRONES.

        S E L L O U T
        klumper
        Reply Vote

      • The Steve Jobs biography

        I think I need to read it, if only to understand current management behavior.

        I believe many psychiatric hospitals have had to open new wards to cope with the new flood of patients, all of them managers who believe they are Steve Jobs.
        jorwell
        Reply Vote

      • "regulations and unnecessary costs"

        I can understand what he meant about "regulations and unnecessary costs" making it difficult for them. After all, it is much easier to pay off a couple local officials in China that it is to follow the laws set up in the US to protect the environment and the health and welfare of workers.
        michaellashinsky@...
        Reply Vote

  • What you need to be talking about

    How unions have evolved from "helping" the worker to being an albatross around their necks. How, under another 4 of Obama will see a total govt "takeover" of our freedoms in the name of the false religion environmentalism. How after 4 more of Obama, how our online speech will be targeted for more control.

    Outsourced jobs will be the least of people's concerns.
    fnewtz@...
    Reply Vote

    • so...

      ...if U.S. workers kiss the feet of the U.S corporate execs who are their rightful lords and masters; and promise to accept 50% pay cuts and vote straight ticket Republican in every election, U.S. employers will start moving jobs back home?

      I don't think so.

      Reply to cwbuechler:

      Looks like I snagged someone who thinks. What do you propose?

      Reply to benched42:

      Good answer. The community orchestra I play in canceled a trip to NY to perform in Carnegie Hall for much the same reason. It's not that I'm opposed to unions or collective bargaining (I worked under a union contract when I was in college and it was assuredly why I could afford to pay for some of my own tuition and actually had medical insurance, even though I was only part time), but union horror stories are good demonstrations of why a narrow focus on self-interest often has adverse consequences for society at large (not that corporate stockholders do any better).

      My original post was, I hope. a constructive troll. We see a lot of unthinking ideologicial and partisan drivel around here. I was hoping to provoke better and appear to have done so.
      John L. Ries
      Reply Vote

      • actually

        according to Mr. Jobs the reason those jobs can't come back is not the wages being paid the workers, it was the cost associated with standing up the factories needed and the inability to hire the high level engineers in a timely fashion. Foxcon hired in 90 days what was estimated to take 18-24 months in the US.
        cwbuechler@...
        Reply Vote

      • It's Not

        It's not so much the workers (in your words) "kissing the feet of the US corporate executives" as much as it's the unions standing against pretty much any kind of progress. As cwbuechler says, it took Foxconn 90 days to do what would be 540-720 days in the US. And that's just the initial phase of building the plant. Too much union and bureaucratic tape to cut through. If you want to cut through that and deliver the products people want you need to cut that "red tape" out of the process, and you simply can't do that in the US.

        When I go to one of the facilities that my company has in Chicago (union city), I can't even climb a ladder to check to see if a wireless access point is properly plugged in to the PoE connector and that the cable is not severed somewhere - I'm not in the electrical union. I can't climb a ladder to check on cable layouts for video feeds from a media closet to a widescreen TV when one of the cables looks like it was cut - I'm not in the union. When we schedule something like this, it's at LEAST three weeks before the union lets someone in to do this.

        Some unions do wonderful things as far as training and apprenticeships to make sure we get qualified professionals. But more often, unions are simply layers of red tape in the way of doing a 2 minute job that's necessary before calling in the properly trained professionals.
        benched42
        Reply Vote

    • Blind Deliverence

      You have little to fear in the way of environmentalism. Now, online speech is another thing. But what took so long???? The Republicans wanted to tap our phones, and did do it! Online speech is just an extension of other speech. Whatever happened to I don't have anything to hide, so I don't care???? Or, don't you just happen to hate the current occupant of the White House????
      eargasm
      Reply Vote

      • You got that right

        No one really seems to have any principles anymore. When Bush was President, nearly every Republican in the country was cheering the Patriot Act and cheering when they saw the police arresting anti-war protestors. They all went along with the "I've got nothing to hide" mentality when it came to letting the government trample the Bill of Rights.

        Now there is a Democrat in the White House, and suddenly these same Republicans are all concerned about "free speech" and they think it is so horrible that Obama is continuing in Bush's footsteps with his efforts to weaken the Constitution.

        It's a shame that people on both the left and the right have let themselves be brainwashed into believing whatever their party's leaders tell them to believe. The don't seem to care what is being done. All that matters is who is doing it. If their party is in power, they will happily give up their freedom to the government. If the other party is in power, then they whine and complain about the government taking away their freedom.

        Rick
        rick@...
        Reply Vote

      • Rick: It's called "partisan hypocrisy"

        ...and both parties do it, though the Republicans do seem to be worse about it than are the Democrats (there are historical reasons for this). Indeed, it seems to me that complete party loyalty without some degree of hypocrisy is almost impossible.

        The problem is an old one too. In 1920, there was a political cartoon portraying the elephant and donkey each holding a piece of a torn copy of the Treaty of Versailles, pointing at each other, and saying "He did it!".
        John L. Ries
        Reply Vote

  • Apple is a Chinese company

    that has outsourced its design work to the USA.
    jorwell
    Reply Vote

    • And Microsoft is an Indian Company

      Collecting Corporate welfare in the United states. Name One product Microsoft makes in the US. You can't, Because Microsoft outsources everything, as does Ford, GM, Chrysler, etc. There are more Toyotas, Hondas, and Subarus made in the US than by the so-called domestic brands. And for the record Canada, and Mexico are not the United States, and don't pay US taxes.
      Jumpin Jack Flash
      Reply Vote

      • Strange assumption

        I make some comment about Apple and you automatically assume I am pro-Microsoft. Why?
        jorwell
        Reply Vote

      • Washington State?

        They are a software company, and employ a few people who previously worked with me in a different state... (proof of providing jobs to even obscure areas/individuals as mine)

        What the heck are you on about?

        [crickets?]
        thoiness2
        Reply Vote

      • @jorwell

        At ZDN, you're pro-MS if you attempt to cut through the ABMer propaganda BS.
        thoiness2
        Reply Vote

    • I'm curious

      as to why you would put it that way... I had the same initial reaction as Jumpin Jack Flash. By your logic Dell would also be a Chinese company that has outsourced it's design work to the USA.
      NonFanboy
      Reply Vote

      • OK, Dell too

        If it keeps people happy.

        I've been critical of Microsoft in the past and people have automatically assumed that I am an open source enthusiast.
        jorwell
        Reply Vote
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