Spinning Along the Wall Street-Washington Axis

Former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has a future so bright he’s gotta wear shades:

Mr. Patrick, a Democrat and close ally of President Obama, left office in January. At Bain, he is expected to concentrate on raising money for a new fund that will focus as much on positive social impact as it will on investment performance.

Bain Capital, which is based in Boston, is one of the biggest and best-known private equity firms, with roughly $65 billion in assets under management.

Yet Mr. Patrick will be joining a firm that became a lightning rod during the past two presidential elections: One of its founders was Mitt Romney, a predecessor of Mr. Patrick in Massachusetts, whose stint in private equity drew scrutiny and criticism from political opponents during his run for the presidency.

One of Bain Capital’s current leaders is Stephen Pagliuca, a longtime Democratic donor who ran unsuccessfully for a United States senate seat in Massachusetts in 2009.

Of course, the move by Mr. Patrick to Bain Capital isn’t the first by a public official to private equity. In 2013, Timothy F. Geithner, the former Treasury secretary, joined the investment firm Warburg Pincus as president.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it just seems a bit curious is all, that Democrats seem to move between Washington and Wall Street just as easily as they slip between Washington and the Mainstream Media.

It’s almost as if one hand washes the other.