Mitt Romney punts on Bain

Here's an AP story Mitt Romney's campaign would rather not see:

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.

Romney and his aides have struggled to respond consistently to intensifying criticism about his tenure at Bain Capital and how it would be reflected in his presidency. The lack of a cohesive message stems, in part, from Romney's fundamental belief that any debate that puts the economy front and center is a win for Republicans.

It's hard to imagine Mitt Romney actually believes that he can sit back and coast to victory as long as the economy stays front and center, but based on his lackadaisical response to the Bain assault, it might actually be true. As Alexander Burns notes, he's been AWOL from the campaign trail since Friday and isn't scheduled to make an appearance until noon on Wednesday when he addresses the Chamber of Commerce. (Edit: He'll be speaking at the Chamber of Commerce, but will be addressing the Latino Coalition, a business group affiliated with the chamber.)

Perhaps Romney will use his speech at the Chamber of Commerce to rebut the Bain broadside, but so far he's allowed the 24x7 assault on the central premise of his candidacy to pass without even appearing in the flesh and blood to make a statement in his own defense. He's outsourced everything to surrogates and their response has been all over the map. As his campaign puts out paper saying it's wrong to talk about Bain because it is an attack on free enterprise, the RNC touts Bain as a political winner because it was profitable. As Romneyland gleefully points their fingers at off-message Democrats, they are comparing what Romney did at Bain favorably to President Obama saving the auto industry. As one surrogate says attacking Bain is fair game, a senior strategist says the Obama campaign is engaging in "performance art gibberish."

But even with Romney in hiding, with his campaign and Republicans on a million different pages, and with Democrats pounding on Bain, the one thing everybody seems to be able to agree with is that if you're looking for somebody to run a private equity firm, Mitt Romney is a good guy to talk to.

The problem for Romney is that one of the reasons he was so good at making money that he dreamed up schemes like extracting profit from struggling companies by loading them up with debt and then taking millions in management fees while creditors got pennies (or less) on the dollar when they collapsed. It takes brains to come up with something like that ... but those aren't the kind of brains you want in the White House.

And while Romney can convincingly make the case that he's a good guy to talk with if you want tax advice (he pays less than 15 percent tax on income over $20 million), he definitely isn't the kind of guy you want devising a fair and equitable tax policy for the nation.

Given the obvious liabilities with his experience at Bain, you'd think Mitt Romney would be more eager to talk about his record as governor of Massachusetts ... but when he was governor, Massachusetts ranked 47th in the nation in job creation. Jobs grew nearly four times faster outside the state than they did inside the state. That's not a track record you want to see in a president. He could justifiably boast about being the father to Obamacare and bringing near-universal coverage to Massachusetts, but he's completely disowned his signature achievement.

So with Mitt Romney you have a guy who is unable to talk about his experience at Bain and is unwilling to talk about his experience as governor ... which raises the question: Just how in the world does he think he'll be able to close the deal and win the presidency? (At this point, it would be rubbing salt in the wound for me to bring up the laughable notion that his Olympic experience qualifies him for the presidency ... or to mock him for bringing a carbon copy of Bush's economic policies to the table.)

Given all of Romney's problems, the more you think about it, the more you can understand why he feels tempted to just sit back and do nothing. Keeping his mouth shut might be his best hope of winning.