Obama says no apology to Romney over Bain attacks

Rom­ney Cam­paign Senior Adviser Ed Gille­spie poses for a photo at Rom­ney Cam­paign head­quar­ters in Boston. The Obama cam­paign is ques­tion­ing whether Rom­ney was at the helm of pri­vate equity firm Bain Cap­i­tal when it sent jobs over­seas, alle­ga­tions that “inde­pen­dent fact check­ers have said are not true, they’re indeed a lie,” Gille­spie said Sun­day, on CNN’s “State of the Union.” (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

PHILIP ELLIOTT

Asso­ci­ated Press

WOLFEBORO, N.H. — Mitt Romney’s cam­paign said Sun­day that Pres­i­dent Barack Obama is will­ing to say any­thing to win a sec­ond term and should say he’s sorry for attacks on the Republican’s suc­cess­ful career at a pri­vate equity firm. “No, we will not apol­o­gize,” the pres­i­dent responded, adding that if Rom­ney wants credit for his busi­ness lead­er­ship, he also needs to take responsibility.

Ques­tions about Romney’s tenure at Bain Cap­i­tal and the for­tune he earned there have dogged the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor as Obama and his allies have said the Boston-based firm shipped jobs over­seas. Rom­ney insists he left the com­pany in Feb­ru­ary 1999 to take over the Olympic Games in Salt Lake City, but doc­u­ments sug­gest he was still in charge as late as 2001.

Romney’s advis­ers, try­ing to explain the dis­crep­an­cies between Romney’s account and fed­eral doc­u­ments, offered fresh expla­na­tions to shift the cam­paign back to more com­fort­able ground.

“He actu­ally retired retroac­tively at that point,” Rom­ney adviser Ed Gille­spie said. “He ended up not going back to the firm after his time in Salt Lake City. So he was actu­ally retired from Bain.”

A sec­ond adviser, Kevin Mad­den, said Rom­ney had no choice but to have his name listed on Secu­rity and Exchange Com­mis­sion doc­u­ments as he sought to trans­fer the company’s lead­er­ship to partners.

“The rea­son that there is a doc­u­ment that had … his sig­na­ture is because, dur­ing that tran­si­tion from 1999 to 2002 … there was a duty to sign those doc­u­ments,” Mad­den said.

The exact role Rom­ney played at the firm between 1999 and 2001 is impor­tant not only because crit­ics have raised ques­tions about his truth­ful­ness, but also because Bain was send­ing jobs over­seas dur­ing that period.

The pres­i­dent said Rom­ney must square his explanation.

“Mr. Rom­ney claims he’s Mr. Fix-It for the econ­omy because of his busi­ness expe­ri­ence, so I think vot­ers entirely legit­i­mately want to know what is exactly his busi­ness expe­ri­ence,” Obama told WAVY-TV in Portsmouth, Va., in an inter­view taped Sat­ur­day and posted on the station’s web­site Sunday

“Mr. Rom­ney is now claim­ing he wasn’t there at the time except his fil­ings with the SEC list­ing says he was the CEO, chair­man and pres­i­dent of the company.”

Obama’s advis­ers said that story won’t sell voters.

“Either you’re the CEO, pres­i­dent, chair­man of the board of Bain Cap­i­tal as you attest to the SEC or he’s telling the Amer­i­can peo­ple he bears no respon­si­bil­ity for that,” deputy cam­paign man­ager Stephanie Cut­ter said. “Both those things can’t be true. Either you’re in charge or you’re not.”

Rom­ney has insisted he was not involved with Bain dur­ing the time it sent jobs over­seas and had no day-to-day respon­si­bil­ity for the com­pany. He said he wanted an apol­ogy from the pres­i­dent for imply­ing otherwise.

“”No, we will not apol­o­gize,” Obama told the TV station.

Cut­ter said Rom­ney should take the advice — stop whin­ing — that he gave his oppo­nents dur­ing the Repub­li­can primary.

“Instead of whin­ing about what the Obama cam­paign is say­ing, why don’t you just put the facts out there and let peo­ple decide instead of try­ing to hide them?” Cut­ter said.

Doc­u­ments place Rom­ney in charge of Bain from 1999 to 2001, a period in which the com­pany out­sourced jobs and ran com­pa­nies that fell into bank­ruptcy. Rom­ney has tried to dis­tance him­self from this period in Bain’s his­tory, say­ing on finan­cial dis­clo­sure forms he had no active role in Bain as of Feb­ru­ary 1999.

But at least three times since then, Bain listed Rom­ney as the company’s “con­trol­ling per­son,” as well as its “sole share­holder, sole direc­tor, chief exec­u­tive offi­cer and pres­i­dent.” One of those doc­u­ments — as late as Feb­ru­ary 2001 — lists Romney’s “prin­ci­pal occu­pa­tion” as Bain’s man­ag­ing director.

“He’s very will­ing to take credit for every­thing good that he thinks hap­pened after that point that Bain Cap­i­tal was involved in, but he’s not will­ing to take respon­si­bil­ity for this,” Obama strate­gist David Axel­rod said, echo­ing com­ments Obama and his allies lev­eled in a week­long blitz about Bain.

Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., said Obama’s attacks cheapen the pres­i­dency and are an attempt to dis­tract vot­ers from Obama’s record in office.

“With these attacks, it shows that he’s just a small politi­cian and run­ning on small-ball pol­i­tics at a time when our coun­try is fac­ing grave, grave chal­lenges,” Ayotte said.

Added Gille­spie: “We now know this pres­i­dent will say or do any­thing to keep the high­est office in the land — even if it means demean­ing the high­est office in the land.”

Romney’s cam­paign released a tele­vi­sion ad Sun­day ask­ing why the pres­i­dent had stopped talk­ing about hope and change, his sig­na­ture mes­sage dur­ing the 2008 cam­paign, and crit­i­ciz­ing him for a bar­rage of neg­a­tive ads against Romney.

Obama’s allies also pushed Rom­ney to release more than the one year of tax returns he has shared. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s for­mer top White House aide, noted Rom­ney released 23 years of taxes to 2008 GOP nom­i­nee John McCain so he could be con­sid­ered as a vice pres­i­den­tial nominee.

“John McCain’s peo­ple looked at it and went with Sarah Palin” as the No. 2 on the ticket that year. “What­ever is in there is far worse than the first year,” Emanuel said. “The Rom­ney cam­paign isn’t stu­pid. They have decided that it’s bet­ter to get attacked on a lack of trans­parency, lack of account­abil­ity to the Amer­i­can peo­ple, ver­sus telling you what’s in those taxes.”

Rom­ney has refused and says that no amount of dis­clo­sure would sat­isfy his critics.

But some in his party said the debate over Romney’s wealth is dis­tract­ing from the campaign.

“He should release the tax returns tomor­row. It’s crazy. You’ve got to release six, eight, 10 years of back tax returns,” said con­ser­v­a­tive Bill Kris­tol, join­ing the Repub­li­cans who want to turn the page on sto­ries about Romney’s vast per­sonal wealth. “Take the hit for a day or two.”

Unless, as Obama’s team hints, the returns prove disqualifying.

“The costs of not releas­ing the returns are clear,” con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist George Will said. “There­fore, he must have cal­cu­lated there are higher costs to releas­ing them.”

Gille­spie appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CNN’s “State of the Union. Cut­ter and Mad­den were on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Axel­rod spoke to CNN. Kris­tol was inter­viewed on “Fox News Sun­day.” Emanuel, Ayotte and Will appeared on ABC’s “This Week.”

Posted by AP News on Jul 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.