I'm an investor. I understand that anyone who wants a decent return has to take risks, and that means accepting that there will be misses as well as hits. One company I've been investing in heavily for a long time is Apple. Sometimes it takes risks and they don't pan out. The Apple Newton, for example, was basically looking to fill what would become the iPhone or iPad niche, but the technology wasn't there yet and it flopped. But the same attitude that took that risk also took the risk of taking Apple into the highly-competitive, extremely risky cell phone market a few years later, and that gave my Apple stock some mind-blowing gains. Speaking of Apple, it had arguably the most well-regarded CEO in history. He almost single-handedly popularized personal computers in the 70s and early 80s, turned Pixar into a company that churned out one mega-hit classic after another, starting in the mid-90s, then took a dying Apple and rebuilt it into the most successful company on the planet in a few short years. Yet, he also was behind NeXT, and its doomed foray into hardware. No matter how brilliant an investor, if someone takes the chances needed to have big paydays, there are going to be some misses. I don't expect anything better from the government than I'd expect from a Steve Jobs or Warren Buffet.
Right-wingers, of course, aren't happy to learn that we taxpayers made a big profit on these investments. They'd rather hear that taxpayers lost billions than to hear they gained billions, if there's any risk of Obama getting some credit for that. So, since reality didn't cooperate with their desire for failure, they will zoom in on whatever portion of the overall investment plan shows a loss, to keep their delicate sensibilities intact.