• LAMB: : What other boards have you served on?

• ROMNEY: Well, I served on Marriott International’s board after -- being named after J. Willard Marriott, I was honored to be able to serve on the board. His son, Bill Marriott Jr., is a wonderful friend. And he invited me, following my race in 1995 against Senator Kennedy, to join the Marriott board. And I did that.

And I have been other boards, Accuride, makes steel wheels for trucks, many of the companies we invested in as a venture capital company, I served on their boards, some successful, some not.

We did a nice job for our investors. I learned what it takes to see companies grow and succeed. I also found that you can make mistakes and have your investment disappear and jobs disappear. It worked both ways.

It has been a learning experience. The private sector is a tough task master. People ask me, is it harder to work in government or in the private sector? Private sector is harder, it’s not forgiving. You make mistakes and you disappear.

You lose your money. You lose jobs. In the public sector, you can always just go out and raise taxes and do, you know, awful things like that. But it’s very forgiving in the public sector other than getting beat up in the press every day.

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