Romney Campaign Press Release - Jack Welch: Mitt Romney is the Most Qualified Leader to Run for President in My Lifetime

"Squawk Box"CNBCJanuary 9, 2012

View Segment Here: http://mi.tt/wOPNt2

JACK WELCH: "Let's take first go to the election and then we'll go to private equity."

ANDREW ROSS SORKIN: "Okay."

WELCH: "In my lifetime, Mitt Romney is the most qualified leader I've ever seen run for the Presidency of the United States. Start with John Kennedy..."

SORKIN: "Did you back him? You didn't back him, though, in the previous election..."

WELCH: "No, and I haven't really jumped out for him now... I looked at all the candidates. Look, let's take him for a minute: Harvard Law School, Harvard MBA, joins BCG, goes to Bain as a consultant. Starts up Bain Capital. Builds it. We'll talk about how well they did or didn't do as a second base of this. Bain—the company—the consulting company, gets in trouble in 1990. Mitt come back and fix it. Leaves Bain Capital, goes back - my wife worked there, at that period - fixed the place up for two years, back to Bain Capital. Bain Capital then has its best years ever. In '99, leaves, goes to the Olympics. I was involved in that. Not in him, but in the Olympics, we were televising it."

SORKIN: "Right, Salt Lake."

WELCH: "We were in deep trouble. They were losing money. They had a scandal with the guy running it, and then 9/11 comes. Everyone wants to cancel it. We've got a big commitment. He goes out there, fixes it totally, again, fixes that up. Comes back, runs for governor. Wins the governorship. The government's ... in debt, he gets it out and gets a surplus. We haven't had anybody do all these things. You think Richard Nixon did that? You think Bill Clinton had those credentials? Certainly Barack Obama didn't have those credentials. Two years in the Senate? I mean, come on. We've got a guy here as a leader—that's demonstrated beyond anything we've ever had. Great family. This is - we're the luckiest people in the world to have this guy there at this point in time."