Joe Klein has a must-read. Money quote:
It seems to me that Obama’s immediate point is wrong: Romney wasn’t primarily about job destruction and corporate plundering. His larger point–that Romney was not so much about job-creation as he was about profit-creation–is correct, though. But the largest point of all is this: private equity capitalism was all about short-term profits–maximizing shareholder value–rather than long-term growth. It ushered in an era of massive executive compensation and bonuses. It prospered because of tax rules that made debt more profitable than equity, and a “carried interest” tax dodge that enabled Mitt Romney to pay a lower percentage in taxes than your average construction worker. It can be a useful tool in restructuring companies and steering them toward profitability, but it is not the sort of model you’d want to apply to the entire American economy.
A President has to be about long-term growth, not short-term profits–and to the extent that Barack Obama is using the Bain ads to make this larger argument, he is not “stumbling” or attacking “free enterprise,” but he is steering the conversation toward the most important topic this year: what sort of economy do we want to have and how do we get there?
The point is that a president cannot just maximize profts for shareholders. Being a CEO is not the same as being a president. Moreover, even if you think that Romney's highly profitable adventures in private equity helped the economy more than hurt it, the rigged system in which he paid lower taxes, exploited other loopholes and made money regardless of the outcome in any specific case is not a pretty picture of real market capitalism.
The relevant analogy in this election is not Romney's time at Bain in terms of his ability to increase employment. It's his record in Massachusetts as governor – during which time, the state came in 47th out of 50 in terms of job growth. And his proposals for the future – which as I currently see them would either explode the debt or end Medicare and Medicaid as we have known them. Or, as Chait points out, give us a second stimulus of a kind he has spent the last four years condemning.
The Dish 