Explaining the U.S. Presidential Election

As I prepare for meetings next week in London, and a presentation to Unilever, I wonder what I will be asked about the U.S. election – how to make sense of it. The explanations and interpretations are many.

• The shifting demographics of Hispanic voters
• "Legitimate rape”
• The ground game
• Citizens United and PAC money
• Koch, Adelson, Israel, Iran
• Social media
• The secret 47% video
• Auto bailout and Anne Romney's Cadillac
• The vagaries of the electoral college
• FEMA and Hurricanes Sandy v. Katrina
• The auto plant in Janesville that closed during the Bush Administration
• Etch-a-Sketch
• Wildly exaggerated fear-mongering about voter fraud
• Tea Party overreach and the extinction of moderate republicanism
• The Romney trip to Canada with the dog on the roof of the family car

All of these were a factor. But there is an explanation at once simpler and deeper. Do you like your bank? If you don’t really love your bank, then you were never really going to like Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. Mitt and Bain remind you not of business innovation and creativity but rather of the schemes played by people with big money that pitched the nation into an economic recession. Mitt Romney and Bain Capital remind people of March 2008, when Bear Sterns was on the edge of collapse and forced into a merger with JP Morgan, loosing 90% of its value. Mitt Romney and Bain Capital bring back memories of September 2008, when Lehman Brothers collapsed; AIG lost 90% of its value and tottered on the edge of collapse; and the Fed stepped in to protect Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley from failure. They remind people of October 2008, when the stock market crashed and lost 22% of its value and banks across Europe collapsed or are were rescued. They remind us all of November 2008, when the government stepped in to protect Citigroup.

If you see this election as one in which President Obama was running against a financial wheeler-dealer, after a period of unparalleled banking and financial recklessness, then the harder question to answer is why was it even close.