The new boss­es billed the meet­ing in late Jan­u­ary 2011 as their ​‘wel­come’ to the 200 work­ers at a long-estab­lished fac­to­ry in Freeport, Ill. Maybe the descrip­tion reflect­ed some dark cor­po­rate humor lost on the work­ers, but just three min­utes into their wel­come, the new man­agers from Sen­sa­ta announced that all the jobs in the fac­to­ry — which pro­duces fine­ly cal­i­brat­ed sen­sors for the auto­mo­bile and oth­er indus­tries — would be moved to Chi­na or anoth­er coun­try by 2013.

According to a Bain Capital internal report, there is ‘little evidence that private equity owners, overall, added value’ to companies they took over.

Sen­sa­ta is the cre­ation of Bain Cap­i­tal, a pri­vate equi­ty fund co-found­ed in 1984 by Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney. Sen­sa­ta was assem­bled from var­i­ous sen­sor man­u­fac­tur­ers in 2006, and it has con­tin­ued its acqui­si­tions even as the U.S. share of its work­force declines sharply. Bain’s strat­e­gy for this basi­cal­ly healthy, mod­er­ate­ly high-tech man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor of the U.S. econ­o­my is appar­ent­ly to trans­fer all the work offshore.

The Illi­nois plant was pre­vi­ous­ly owned by Hon­ey­well. Tom Gaulrapp, who has worked there for 33 years, at first refused to believe that Sen­sa­ta would move the high­ly auto­mat­ed and prof­itable oper­a­tions from Freeport, where skilled employ­ees had devel­oped many of the prod­ucts and machin­ery. Then he learned more about Bain and grew angry.

​“Isn’t my job worth more than anoth­er dol­lar in a millionaire’s pock­et?” he asks. ​“It’s our Amer­i­can dream they’re throw­ing over­board. We don’t have prob­lems with them want­i­ng to make a dol­lar, but when is enough enough? These com­pa­nies have to have some respon­si­bil­i­ty to the com­mu­ni­ties in which they’re located.”

No, they don’t — or at least, not in the world of pri­vate equi­ty funds from which Rom­ney hails. Despite Romney’s claim to be a job cre­ator (the hon­orary title Repub­li­cans bestow on all rich peo­ple), that world is one where the extra dol­lar in a millionaire’s pock­et is always worth more than someone’s job.

It does not mat­ter how that dol­lar gets into the millionaire’s pock­et. Whether through a finan­cial sleight of hand that adds lit­tle to (or, indeed, takes away from) the over­all econ­o­my; through tax breaks, sub­si­dies or favor­able gov­ern­ment rules (or often no rules at all); or through the destruc­tion of the lives of the less wealthy and pow­er­ful. And if the millionaire’s pock­et, like Romney’s, is a secret bank account in Switzer­land, the Cay­man Islands, or anoth­er noto­ri­ous haven from tax col­lec­tors and law enforce­ment, so much the better.

Thanks to the elec­tion-sea­son scruti­ny of Rom­ney, Amer­i­cans are get­ting a refresh­er course on such mon­e­tary machi­na­tions. The stage is now set for a seri­ous, sub­stan­tive debate about how the cur­rent mod­el of Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ism works — and how it fails.

So far, such a debate hasn’t mate­ri­al­ized. Jour­nal­ists and the Oba­ma cam­paign have con­fined them­selves to needling Rom­ney about his tenure at Bain, irri­tat­ing Repub­li­cans and a few Democ­rats (includ­ing for­mer Pres­i­dent Clin­ton). Polls show that these crit­i­cisms have soured some inde­pen­dent vot­ers in key bat­tle­ground states on Rom­ney. In response, Romney’s cam­paign has alter­nate­ly tried to change the sub­ject and to deny that he was respon­si­ble for sev­er­al promi­nent Bain-owned com­pa­nies that off­shored jobs, closed fac­to­ries or declared bankruptcy.

But the denials grow less plau­si­ble as accounts of Romney’s rela­tion­ship to Bain become more con­tra­dic­to­ry. Though he has often claimed that he left the firm in Feb­ru­ary 1999 and gave up all man­age­r­i­al respon­si­bil­i­ties to run the 2002 Olympics, offi­cial Secu­ri­ties and Exchange Com­mis­sion fil­ings depict him as CEO, chair­man, sole own­er and man­ag­ing direc­tor from 1999 to 2002.

Con­flict­ing accounts at the time described him as tak­ing a leave of absence and as work­ing part-time after 1999, and a cam­paign spokesper­son recent­ly mud­died the waters more by say­ing Rom­ney ​“retroac­tive­ly retired.” Sev­er­al news reports, includ­ing a late-July Asso­ci­at­ed Press sto­ry, cite doc­u­ments or quote asso­ciates indi­cat­ing that Rom­ney kept doing busi­ness at Bain. Accord­ing to the AP, ​“Rom­ney con­tin­ued to over­see his part­ner­ship stakes even as he dis­en­gaged from the firm, per­son­al­ly sign­ing or approv­ing a series of cor­po­rate and legal doc­u­ments through the spring of 2001.” He also met with Bain’s part­ners dur­ing this time to ​“nego­ti­ate his sep­a­ra­tion from the com­pa­ny” — includ­ing a gen­er­ous sev­er­ance pack­age (the details of which Rom­ney and Bain refuse to disclose).

The shift­ing fac­tu­al claims raise ques­tions about whether Rom­ney is lying about his role at Bain to escape pub­lic scruti­ny. After all, the more Rom­ney is direct­ly linked to off­shoring jobs, clos­ing a plant or push­ing a com­pa­ny into bank­rupt­cy, the more dam­age his cam­paign suffers.

Beyond Romney’s attempts to evade respon­si­bil­i­ty for spe­cif­ic buy-outs, most damn­ing is the incon­tro­vert­ible fact that the GOP pres­i­den­tial hope­ful was a key archi­tect of what has become known as the ​“Bain mod­el.” And as pres­i­dent, it can be expect­ed that he would gov­ern the coun­try using the val­ues that gov­erned Bain Capital.

David Brooks, the gen­teel con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist for the New York Times, urges Rom­ney not to deny or act apolo­getic for off­shoring jobs like Gaulrapp’s. (He’s joined in this admo­ni­tion by oth­ers, includ­ing lib­er­al pun­dits such as Matthew Ygle­sias.) Instead, Brooks wants Rom­ney to defend off­shoring as cen­tral to ​“the entire log­ic of cap­i­tal­ism as it has exist­ed over sev­er­al decades,” and in the process ​“to define a vision of mod­ern capitalism.”

It’s a debate that both Rom­ney and Oba­ma should engage in — pos­si­bly start­ing in Freeport, as the city’s may­or has urged. (Freeport was the site of a 1858 Lin­coln-Dou­glas debate.) It’s long past time for can­di­dates to address the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: ​“What’s the best mod­el of cap­i­tal­ism for Amer­i­ca?” Were that debate to hap­pen, it would make the 2012 elec­tion among the most momen­tous in mod­ern Amer­i­can his­to­ry. (For an expla­na­tion of why such a debate is not like­ly to occur, see Jeff Faux’s ​“In the Twi­light of Empire” on page 20.)

Defend­ing the indefensible

It’s hard to imag­ine what evi­dence Rom­ney could muster to defend mod­ern cap­i­tal­ism. The results of the past 30 years have not been inspir­ing. They include an immense shift in wealth from the work­ing class to the very rich, near-record inequal­i­ty and, for the major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans, declin­ing social mobil­i­ty and grow­ing eco­nom­ic inse­cu­ri­ty. In addi­tion, these decades have been punc­tu­at­ed by fre­quent and increas­ing­ly seri­ous finan­cial scan­dals, abus­es and crises.

Romney’s vision suf­fers by com­par­i­son with the old­er cap­i­tal­ism of his auto-exec­u­tive father, George, who ran a busi­ness that actu­al­ly made prod­ucts and cre­at­ed Amer­i­can jobs. George Rom­ney also will­ing­ly dis­closed 12 years of tax returns when he ran for pres­i­dent in 1968, which is 11 years more than Mitt has done. (On the oth­er hand, we shouldn’t let nos­tal­gia sanc­ti­fy George Rom­ney, who famous­ly called Unit­ed Auto Work­ers leader Wal­ter Reuther ​“the most dan­ger­ous man in Detroit.”

The prob­lems with the Rom­ney-Brooks mod­el stem from the grow­ing clout of Big Finance and multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions, cou­pled with the declin­ing influ­ence of work­ing- and mid­dle-class Amer­i­cans. The peo­ple have lost pow­er to busi­ness both in the work­place, as unions erode, and in pol­i­tics, as big mon­ey gains a stran­gle­hold over the major par­ties. Con­se­quent­ly, many Amer­i­cans suc­cumb to an ​“all-par­ties-are-the-same” polit­i­cal apa­thy as the nation slides to the Right. Even when they or their neigh­bors are sav­aged by preda­to­ry employ­ers, many mid­dle- and even work­ing-class Amer­i­cans shrug and say that’s busi­ness as usu­al. What else would you expect the free mar­ket to do?

But busi­ness­es in the Unit­ed States could be held to high­er stan­dards, as they once were and still are in the social democ­ra­cies of West­ern Europe. For exam­ple, accord­ing to the dom­i­nant view for sev­er­al decades, cor­po­rate man­agers should have only one objec­tive: max­i­miz­ing share­hold­er val­ue. Why not pick a more respon­si­ble goal, such as effec­tive­ly max­i­miz­ing social val­ue while still opti­miz­ing prof­it for long-term growth?

Fight­ing Bain in vain?

In a July USA Today poll, 63 per­cent of those sur­veyed thought Romney’s busi­ness back­ground pro­vid­ed an advan­tage in deal­ing with the econ­o­my. But a grand debate on what kind of cap­i­tal­ism Amer­i­ca needs, com­bined with hard-hit­ting report­ing on Romney’s record, could turn his bal­ly­hooed main cre­den­tial — his stint at Bain — into a strong turn-off for voters.

On bal­ance, the pri­vate equi­ty firm’s shenani­gans — or ​“finan­cial engi­neer­ing” — helped no one but a few par­a­sitic mil­lion­aires, who fat­tened their Cay­man accounts. And Sensata’s only con­tri­bu­tion to the Freeport oper­a­tion will like­ly be exploita­tion of low Chi­nese wages.

Nei­ther Romney’s busi­ness expe­ri­ence at Bain nor his weak eco­nom­ic record as gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts offer any rea­son to think that he learned some­thing use­ful about pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship in cre­at­ing jobs, espe­cial­ly good jobs. And his reliance on tax havens, his refusal to release his tax returns and his lack of can­dor about his tenure at Bain sug­gest not only that he tends toward secre­cy, but that he has some­thing to hide.

​“We cheered Rom­ney win­ning [the Repub­li­can pri­maries],” says AFL-CIO Polit­i­cal Direc­tor Michael Pod­horz­er. ​“It’s bring­ing to the fore all the things that have made work­ers poor­er for 30 years. It gives work­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vote up or down on these poli­cies and whether they want the coun­try to go in this direc­tion. It’s not just about char­ac­ter. It’s about work­ers, not a dog on the roof.”

Obama’s own record, such as his fail­ure to push for an alter­na­tive to NAF­TA-style trade agree­ments, makes him an imper­fect can­di­date to debate Rom­ney on the future of cap­i­tal­ism. And some vot­ers don’t see him as a strong advo­cate of his own views. ​“Most­ly it seems like he doesn’t want to fight for any­thing,” laments Gaulrapp, a life-long Demo­c­rat who is unen­thused about Obama.

But Oba­ma defends a few core val­ues: the idea that whether we’re win­ners or losers, we’re all in a finan­cial boat togeth­er; the impor­tance of pub­lic invest­ment in the econ­o­my; and the need for checks on finan­cial indus­try shenani­gans. And he warns that Rom­ney rep­re­sents a return to the poli­cies that cre­at­ed our finan­cial cri­sis. Beyond sup­port­ing the pro­pos­als to shift tax incen­tives to keep jobs in the Unit­ed States and oppos­ing Romney’s tax give­away to glob­al cor­po­ra­tions, Oba­ma needs to artic­u­late a view of a glob­al econ­o­my based on rais­ing stan­dards of liv­ing, pro­tect­ing work­ers and com­mu­ni­ties, and set­ting tough stan­dards for multi­na­tion­al cor­po­ra­tions. And with Rom­ney as his foil, he has the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to attack casi­no cap­i­tal­ism and advo­cate tougher reform of the finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, espe­cial­ly ​“shad­ow bank­ing” oper­a­tions such as pri­vate equi­ty firms.

If peo­ple come to under­stand the real record of Bain Cap­i­tal and the pri­vate equi­ty busi­ness — and if Oba­ma can cre­ate a per­sua­sive vision of a bet­ter form of cap­i­tal­ism — it’s like­ly that even in a weak but recov­er­ing econ­o­my, a major­i­ty of vot­ers will agree with Sen­sa­ta work­er Cheryl Randecker’s assess­ment of Rom­ney: ​“I wouldn’t trust him to run a com­pa­ny, let alone a country.”