17 Oct 2012 3:36 pm
Mitts binders full of women not even true.With three separate competing websites, a Facebook page thats already received almost 250,000 likes, and a Twitter account that had attracted 13,000 followers before the debate ended, theres no question that Mitt Romneys comments about searching through binders full of women was the breakout viral star of last nights presidential debate. But the comment is as revealing as it is funny.The remark came in response to a question about what each man onstage would do for women, and Romneys answer was essentially that hes hired lots of women over his lifetime and has responded to their needs by providing things like a flex schedule so they could pick kids up at school. We took a concerted effort to go out and find women who had backgrounds that could be qualified to become members of our cabinet. I went to a number of womens groups and said, can you help us find folks? And I brought us whole binders full of of women, Romney said.But that story turns out to be not quite true, according to veteran Boston Phoenix journalist David Bernstein. As Bernstein pointed out last night, what actually happened is that a bipartisan coalition of womens groups came together to compile lists of eligible female candidates for office before the 2002 gubernatorial election had even occurred. Romney says he went to a number of womens groups and asked them for the binders, but the opposite is true they went to him. Bernstein also notes that many of the senior-level women Romney hired were given control of departments and agencies that were not a priority for the governor, while there were almost zero women working on the budget or businesses development, areas that Romney cared more about.Vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan defended Romneys comments on CBS This Morning, saying, All he simply meant was that he went out of his way to try to recruit qualified women to serve in his administration when he was governor. That claim seems to be undercut by the fact that the groups came to Romney, instead of the other way around. Ryan added, By the way, he has an exceptional record of hiring women in very prominent positions in his administration.But that too may be a bit overly boastful. During Romneys tenure in the governors mansion, the number of women in high-level positions actually declined by almost 30 percent, according to a 2007 study from the coalition of womens group responsible for the binders effort.Meanwhile, the Boston Globe noted last night that if Romney was really concerned about hiring women to senior positions, it seems to have started only when he entered public life. At Bain Capital, his private equity firm, Romney did not have any women partners during the 1980s and 1990s. Romney, the Globe added, did not have a history of appointing women to high-level positions.UPDATE: And now straight from the horses mouth. MassGAP, the womens coalition responsible for the effort to get more women appointed to state government, gives the Washington Post a statement saying Romney has it wrong they, and not Romney, initiated the process . The group also notes that female appointments actually fell off during Romneys tenure.