What parts of Romney's business experience would influence his actions in the Oval office? That is a central question that voters should evaluate, although finding the answers will not be easy given the frenzied spin from both sides.
 
The brickbats began last week with Barack Obama's first major ad buy of the campaign featuring a displaced steelworker calling Bain a vampire "that sucked the life out of us." A Romney response video asked, "Have you had enough of President Obama's attacks on free enterprise?" Newark's Democratic Mayor Cory Booker was featured in the Romney ad because he described the blame-Bain game as "nauseating" on "Meet the Press." Then Booker released his own video saying, in effect, that he was for the Obama attacks after he was against them. The Republicans came back with a video suggesting that the Obama campaign pressured Booker into recanting....

Romney's passionate responses to attacks on his business record during the Republican primaries seemed genuine rather than gimmicky. (For the most part, Romney lacks that essential political gift of faking sincerity). "I will not apologize for being successful," Romney declared during a late January debate in Florida. He quickly added, with awkward syntax, "The nature of America is individuals pursuing their dreams don`t make everyone else poorer -- they help make us all better off. And so I'm not going to apologize for success or apologize for free enterprise"....

What matters is not Bain's job-creation record but the values that Romney absorbed on the job. Romney's ... conviction that a dynamic economy produces winners and, yes, losers would undoubtedly shape his presidency. That is his economic vision – and it is directly linked to his years at Bain.

The problem, of course, is that this is not the kind of argument apt to pop in TV commercials in the heat of a presidential quest. Instead, the exaggerated Democratic attacks on Romney's record in private equity are designed to make him seem like the 19th century landlord who throws widows and orphans into the cold on Christmas day. Small wonder that Obama said at Monday's press conference that Romney's Bain record is "not a distraction" before adding, with a hint of malice, "this is what this campaign is going to be about."