Midd alumnus in media spotlight for gaffe…again

Bain analyst Mike Griffin

For the second time this year, the media has called out a Midd alumnus for an embarrassing gaffe–both times connected to Mitt Romney.

This morning, Gawker–a media news and gossip blog–posted an email that a Bain Capital analyst sent Gawker creator Nick Denton expressing interest in investing in their company. This employee unfortunately didn’t realize that late this summer Gawker released thousands of Bain’s confidential documents to expose the potential illegal tax dodging of the private equity company that presidential hopeful Mitt Romney founded…awkward.

Here’s where it gets good: That clueless Bain analyst happened to have graduated with a degree in American Studies and Economics from the prestigious institution of Middlebury College in 2011. Mike Griffin was also lacrosse and hockey player at Middlebury before entering the financial sector after graduating.

This follows another incident involving a Midd grad, which occurred after the Republican National Convention in late August. Many people blamed Mitt Romney’s top campaign strategist and apparent Midd alumni Stuart Stevens for bad decisions that led to the disastrous end of the Republication Convention, which included Clint Eastwood ranting to an empty chair and a vague speech by Romney that Stuart apparently wrote. An article about Stevens featured in on Politico says,

“Viewed warily by conservatives, known for his impulsiveness and described by a colleague as a “tortured artist,” Stevens has become the leading staff scapegoat for a campaign that suddenly is behind in a race that had been expected to stay neck and neck through Nov. 6.”

MiddBlog hasn’t been able to find exactly when Stevens graduated from Middlebury, but on his Wikipedia page and elsewhere online Midd is listed as one of his alma maters. We speculate he may have graduated from Middlebury’s Breadloaf School of English as he is listed as a Breadloaf donor and also apparently worked as a travel writer.

To leave things on a better note,  Middlebury Professor of Political Science Matt Dickinson apparently published an article in the Economist this morning about Obama slipping in the polls and Romney coming back after the first debate (it only says “by M.D.; Middlebury, VT” but we think Professor Dickinson is a safe guess). Legit! Follow him and Midd Political Science Professor Bert Johnson on Middlebury Magazine’s series “Professor Pundits.”