My take on this morning's developments here and here. But even the WaPo concedes that Romney cited his active Bain business ties from 1999 on in 2002 under oath to help establish residential eligibility to run for governor of Massachusetts in 2002. And Kessler admits that Romney's sworn testimony on this contradicts his legal SEC filing, and several filings Romney made as CEO in the period in question. Steve Kornacki tries to glean what Romney was thinking by keeping his ties to Bain and Bain acquisitions while off in Utah:
[I]t makes all the sense in the world that he would have held on to his leadership titles at Bain and planned to return after the games. For most of the time he was in Utah, politics was not a realistic option for Romney’s immediate post-Olympic career. And because of this, it makes all the sense in the world that Romney would have remained apprised of Bain’s activities while in Utah and maintained some level of engagement, even if he wasn’t directly involved in the company’s day-to-day activities.
How Kevin Roose frames the story:
Romney, during his leave of absence, looks to have been a Potemkin CEO, in charge without actually being in charge. Does that mean, per the Obama campaign, that Romney can be "blamed for bankruptcies and layoffs from Bain investments" until he formally left Bain in 2002? In a legal and political sense, certainly. By keeping his titles and Bain shares during his leave of absence (probably in the hopes that he would return to Bain after the Olympics), he allowed himself to be kept on the hook for anything, good or bad, that the firm did while he was off in Salt Lake City.
Seems pretty clear to me – unless Romney wants to argue that being the CEO of a company doesn't mean you have any actual responsibility for it, which is a little troubling for a potential president's future accountability, don't you think? In fact, it sounds like Rumsfeld's view of being defense secretary. Weigel's take:
Sure, Romney's name appeared on Bain's SEC filings. But he didn't make Bain's decisions. He only benefited financially from them. Now you see why the Obama campaign thinks it can drag this out over weeks and months. Explaining why Romney himself wasn't really CEO during his leave of absence (when he was trying to save the American Olympics, for Pete's sake!) involves explaining some complicated corporation-fu. In the meantime, the Obama campaign can use "outsource" in every other graf of its press releases, and ignore the Fact-Check squads.
Allahpundit yawns:
One of the ironies of this story is that Romney’s opponents already have a way to tie him to Bain’s post-1999 record, irrespective of whether he quit day-to-day operations at the time. Remember this NYT piece from last December describing how Romney’s retirement deal with Bain granted him a share of profits on deals made through 2009? He was still receiving some of those profits last year because some of the deals hadn’t wound down yet. If the touchstone here is Romney making money off of Bain’s work rather than Romney directing Bain’s operations, then Democrats don’t need the Globe story.
But Romney was paid a salary as well – for a job he has said both that he didn't do in any way and subsequently that he did, while running the Olympics. That's the issue. Only one of Romney's stories can be true, and one of them was under oath. And if he really didn't do anything, then the issue is Romney's possible perjury in 2002 and 2011. The Republicans once impeached a president who committed perjury. Are they now going to nominate someone who did it as well – and insist it's no big deal? Or does it all hinge on what the meaning of CEO and "sole owner" is? Josh Barro looks at the bigger picture:
[R]eally, what Mitt Romney was doing in 2000 is beside the point. Romney founded one of America's leading private equity firms. What private equity does is take underperforming firms and make them more profitable, sometimes by closing facilities and sending operations overseas. If he can't defend Bain's 1999-2002 record on the merits, he can't defend its record from 1984 to 1999 either.
He can defend it in principle. But when it means he was responsible for investing in a company that disposes of aborted fetuses, and signed a filing for that particular company, you can see why he doesn't want to defend 1999 to 2001 in practice. It would destroy him with the pro-life base.
Here's a question worth asking, say, Kathryn Jean Lopez and the Catholic hierarchy: do you really support a candidate who invested in a company that disposed of the corpses of countless unborn children? Is that what your pro-life movement has really culminated in?
The Dish 