Economy, Bain Capital | featured news

Actually, it’s not the economy. At least not this week. A presidential campaign that Republicans wanted to be focused relentlessly on President Obama’s job-creation record seems to be about almost everything else at the moment. In part that’s the result of a monthslong effort by the Obama campaign to shift attention to Mitt Romney’s wealth and business record.

Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing Mitt Romney, released a new radio ad Friday knocking President Barack Obama for his handling of the economy and calling into question the Obama campaign's repeated attacks on Romney and Bain Capital. The new spot, titled "Imagine," is part of a $1 million radio ad campaign and will air from July 27 to Aug. 2 across swing states Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

While Bain Capital wasn’t alone in using financial engineering to turbo-charge its returns, it was among the most aggressive under Romney’s leadership. Enriching investors by taking leveraged bets isn’t a qualification for a job requiring long-term vision and concern for public welfare.

President Obama says Mitt Romney's business experience doesn't qualify him for the presidency because it was about making money, not creating jobs. "If you're a head of a large private equity firm or hedge fund, your job is to make money," Obama told CBS News. "It's not to create jobs. It's not even to create a successful business -- it's to make sure that you're maximizing returns for your investor."

While the Supreme Court’s upholding of the health-care law was last week’s most important event in historical terms, it will not be the decisive event of the 2012 election. In the long run, polling in swing states suggesting that Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is hurting him could have larger implications for where this campaign will move.

The Washington Post is standing by its reporting on Bain Capital’s outsourcing under Mitt Romney, and will not retract a recent story despite complaints from the Romney campaign.

The attack is the latest iteration of President Obama’s attempts to demonize Mitt Romney over his tenure at Bain Capital.

The core of his presidential candidacy under attack, Mitt Romney has yet to shape a playbook to defend a quarter-century in the business world that created great riches for himself and great hardship, at times, for some American workers....

President Obama, targeting Mitt Romney's work at Bain Capital, says private equity is not good preparation for the presidency.