President Obama sharpens focus on Mitt Romney's Bain experience

On Thursday night, President Obama spoke at the Iowa fairgrounds'the very same fairgrounds where (as he noted) Mitt Romney declared "Corporations are people"'and delivered a sharp, focused critique of Mitt Romney's record at Bain and what it means for Romney's candidacy.

In his speech, Obama went beyond what he said during his initial comments about the Bain controversy earlier in the week with a more pointed critique of Romney's tactics at Bain. He stuck to his core premise, which is that Mitt Romney, by making his Bain Capital experience the centerpiece of his campaign, has demonstrated that he is not prepared for the presidency, but went into more depth on why he believes Romney's experience is the wrong kind of experience.

Here's how President Obama began his case (full transcript here):

Governor Romney has made his experience as a financial CEO the entire rationale of his candidacy for president. Now, he doesn't really talk about what he did in Massachusetts. But he does talk about being a business'business guy. Right? He says this gives him a special understanding of what it takes to create jobs and grow the economy'even if he's unable to offer a single new idea about how to do that, no matter how many times he's asked about it, he says he knows how to do it. So I think it's a good idea to look at the way he sees the economy.

Obama then pointed out that Romney's goal was to earn a profit for Bain, not to create jobs. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, he said, but:

When maximizing short-term gains for your investors rather than building companies that last is your goal, then sometimes it goes the other way. Workers get laid off. Benefits disappear. Pensions are cut. Factories go dark. In some cases, companies are loaded up with debt ' not to make the companies more productive, not to buy new equipment to keep them at the cutting-edge, but just to pay investors. Companies may go bankrupt as a result. Taxpayers may be on the hook to help out on those pensions. Investors walk off with big returns, and working folks get stuck holding the bag.

And experience in doing those sorts of things'in short, Mitt Romney's experience'is not what we want in the White House, Obama said.

Now, that may be the job of somebody who's engaged in corporate buyouts. That's fine. But that's not the job of a President. (Applause.) That's not the President's job. There may be value for that kind of experience, but it's not in the White House. (Applause.)

Obama then made the case for what he thinks a president should be focused on:

See, the job of a President is to lay the foundation for strong and sustainable broad-based growth ' not one where a small group of speculators are cashing in on short-term gains. It's to make sure that everybody in this country gets a fair shake'(applause)'everybody gets a fair shot, everybody is playing by the same set of rules. (Applause.)

Without using labels, Obama then contrasted the Democratic vision for American capitalism with Mitt Romney's Republican vision:

Now, let me tell you something. We believe in the profit motive. We believe that risk-takers and investors should be rewarded. That's what makes our economy so dynamic. But we also believe everybody should have opportunity. (Applause.) We believe'we think everybody who makes the economy more productive or a company more productive should benefit.

And the problem with our economy isn't that the American people aren't productive enough'you're working harder than ever. Productivity is through the roof. It's been going up consistently over the last decade. The challenge we face right now'the challenge we've faced for over a decade'is that harder work hasn't led to higher incomes. Bigger profits haven't led to better jobs. And you can't solve that problem if you can't even see that it's a problem. (Applause.)

And he doesn't see it's a problem. And so this experience explains why he is proposing the exact same policies that we already tried in the last decade, the very policies that got us into this mess. He sincerely believes that if CEOs and wealthy investors are getting rich, then the wealth is going to trickle down and the rest of us are going to do well, too. And he is wrong.

I think it was a strong critique of Romney and one that can be sustained through election day. The question I have is whether it will be sufficient to deploy this line of attack against Romney while simultaneously telling the story of the Obama administrations achievements and making broad statements about values and priorities for the second-term, or whether there there will ultimately need to be more specifics about the second-term governing agenda. If the economy picks up steam, it will probably will be enough; but if the economy falters, the president will probably need to articulate a concrete jobs plan. That's a tough position for an incumbent to be in, but his critique of Romney puts him in a good position to do just that.