The cacophony of television and radio ads in this year’s governor’s race has been truly mind-numbing. Ads run by all the candidates touting themselves, but mostly damning the others, have been incessant. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent hammering into voters’ heads all the reasons not to vote for one candidate or another. Many in the media and the public decry such " negative " campaign tactics as uncivil, and rightfully so. But knowing why you wouldn’t want someone to be your governor — or any other public-office holder — is as powerful and important to voters’ decision-making as listening to politicians’ often undeliverable promises. Right? So yes, while the downward slide of political ads this season has been seemingly inexorable, the spots have actually taught me a few important things about Mitt Romney that I’ll take into the ballot booth this week.

Ever since Mitt Romney rode back into town and commandeered the Republican nomination for governor, I have been glued to my television and wedded to my newspapers trying to figure out just who he is and what he stands for. And I now know why I don’t want Mitt Romney to be my governor. His past deeds, his life experience, everything he says, in fact, lead me to conclude he is the wrong guy for me and the wrong guy for Massachusetts.

I now know that in his heart he’s not pro-choice, that he doesn’t understand that gays and lesbians are entitled to the same rights and dignities as every other citizen, that he is for the death penalty because he actually believes it deters homicides. These might all be reason enough not to want Mitt Romney in a position to influence our state’s policies in these areas. But as troubling as these stances are, they are not the main reason why he shouldn’t be our governor. No, the very qualification he and his supporters tout as his strongest — his business experience — is the very reason he is entirely unsuited to the job.

Now, if I were looking for someone to invest my money with an eye to getting an exceptional rate of return, Mitt Romney would be at the top of the list. But the talents and techniques needed to " make the deal, " are simply not those desired in a governor. In fact, they are antithetical to good governing.

There is just no point of intersection between being a successful executive in a venture-capital company — " running the deals, " in the lingo of that cutthroat business — and being a successful " chief executive " of a state, i.e., a governor. Make no mistake, Mitt Romney’s venture-capital investments are not about job creation, or producing goods and services, or creating better working conditions, or anything else concerned with serving the needs of a pluralistic community. They are about ROI — return on investment — making money, pure and simple. As Romney’s deputy campaign manager, Eric Fehrnstrom, so candidly put it, " Bain Capital is not an operating company. They make investments and they support management, and most of the investments they have made have been successful. "

In fact, it is fair to say that Mitt Romney, with a few short-term exceptions, has never operated a business — other than Bain Capital. Even his highly acclaimed takeover of the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics was a short-term involvement with a very narrowly construed objective.

So, when we hear about the pain and suffering of workers whose jobs were lost and whose lives were turned inside out because of business decisions made by Mitt Romney, or as he says, by his hired management teams, we must understand that those workers lost their jobs and their plants were closed not because Mitt Romney is bad at what he does, but precisely because he’s superb at what he does: he takes whatever actions are necessary to ensure that he and his investors get the highest possible profit returned to them. And if that means closing plants and cutting jobs, so be it. Romney is not interested in long-term results, or wending his way through the ups and downs of the business cycle, or struggling with the day-to-day exigencies of operating an organization. His objective is, in fact, quite the opposite: to get in and get out as quickly as possible. And based on the profits Romney personally realized from the Ampad deal — not to mention the more than $100 million profit reaped by Bain, according to the Associated Press — for him, his partners, and investors it was a " winner. " As usual.

Of course, we all know that government doesn’t work the way a venture-capital company does. We all know it can’t and it shouldn’t. But the point must be made: unlike those companies he’s bought and sold, and whose boards and stock he controlled, and unlike those environments where his decision was the last word, the corner office of the State House requires its occupant to engage in constant negotiation, compromise, and consideration of the common good. And if there is anything we’ve learned about Mitt Romney’s nature, it’s that he doesn’t like being questioned. As one person familiar with Romney’s leadership of the Olympics put it, he is " a person who is used to getting his way, and if you don’t go along, there are repercussions. " A woman familiar with Romney through Belmont’s Mormon Church echoes this sentiment: " As long as things are going his way and he’s successful, he can be very pleasant. But he doesn’t like conflict, and in situations of conflict, he can be very tough on people. "

As governor, Mitt Romney would have to march to the tune of many constituencies with diverse needs — and the conflicts among those constituencies and among those who share the power of running state government would be numerous. There is nothing to indicate that Mitt Romney has the right temperament, let alone skills, to succeed in such an environment. Indeed, it seems the opposite is true. The notion that deficits in the state budget can be managed by fiat from the governor’s office, just as CEOs manage private businesses by ordering cutbacks and shutdowns, is absurd. The governor can’t fire an obstreperous legislature in the way Romney has fired associates at Bain or gotten rid of executives and workers at companies he has controlled. Such imperious actions in business are heartless enough, but they are utterly inappropriate to governing for the greater good of a state’s citizenry.

At its core, being a governor is about building consensus among varied interests. It’s about leading and inspiring people. It’s about investing for the long term. It’s about making complex choices and compromises that have at heart the best interests of as many people as possible. And it is also about sharing power and the decision-making process with people who don’t necessarily share your viewpoint. Running a venture-capital firm is about none of these. None.

So when I see and hear those negative ads about how heartless Mitt Romney has been in a number of his business ventures, I wince. But I don’t wince because I think Mitt Romney is malevolent or incompetent. I wince because I realize that Mitt Romney made the decisions that hurt those people without even flinching; it was part of the " roll-up, " part of " the deal. " I wince because I hear the drummer Mitt Romney marches to, and its beat is completely out of sync with what governing is principally about. And so, yes, those negative ads aren’t nice, but they sure helped me figure out why I wouldn’t want Mitt Romney to be my governor.