Mitt Romney — who has placed his business record at the centerpiece of his presidential campaign — is now asking President Obama to stop discussing his tenure with Bain Capital. During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd, the former Massachusetts governor asked Obama to avoid discussing “business or family or taxes or things of that nature”:
“[O]ur campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature.” [...]
“[W]e only talk about issues. And we can talk about the differences between our positions and our opponent’s position.” Romney said of his own campaign: “[O]ur ads haven’t gone after the president personally. … [W]e haven’t dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven’t gone after the personal things.”
The Obama campaign has turned Romney’s business past into a campaign issue, noting that the the governor himself touts that experience as his “main calling card” for setting the country on the right track.
Until recently, Romney seemed to agree. “Look, I’m very proud of my experience at Bain Capital. I hope people understand that I was investing other people’s money for them and was compensated if we were highly successful,” he told CNBC’s Larry Kudlow on July 23. “That’s the kind of record which I’m pretty proud of.”
Top surrogate and adviser John Sununu echoed this argument during a Romney campaign conference in May, saying, “I think the Bain record as a whole is fair game, and what you have to do is do an honest evaluation.”
