The letters printed recently on the subject of the president’s remarks about business were interesting, but not as interesting as the Republicans’ plan to use “We Built This!” as a theme at their nominating convention.

In yet another weird series of events, the president links success in business with what he called “our unbelievable American system” of infrastructure and education.

FOX News does what FOX News regularly does, deleting the sentences that provide context and insisting that the president has insulted business owners. Republicans plan their convention around this deliberate distortion of the facts.

The convention is being held in the Tampa Bay Times Forum Arena, which was built primarily with government funds. The candidate who is expected to generate enthusiasm is Paul Ryan, whose family’s construction business was indeed successful after decades of government contracts for road-building.

The dishonesty and hypocrisy are approaching critical mass.

The president is correct when he says, “The point is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.”

The truth is that the only way to do big things is to do them together.

Mitt Romney’s life experience isn’t particularly helpful, given the problems we face. As a corporate executive, his focus was creating profits for shareholders, not improving the lives of working families or creating consensus.

At the end of his term as governor of Massachusetts, his approval rating was 36 percent, and his constituents immediately elected a Democrat, whom they re-elected in 2010. Romney’s most important advantage, the enormous benefit that propelled him through the historically vicious Republican primaries all the way to Tampa, is financial. Billionaires clearly prefer Mitt.

It remains to be seen who the rest of us will choose.

Abby Fowler

Ironton