Ted Kennedy would approve. President Barack Obama took down Mitt Romney the same way the late Massachusetts senator did.
In battleground states, it was all about Bain Capital. A barrage of attack ads on Romney's tenure there highlighted plant closures, layoffs and outsourcing — the same themes Kennedy used to beat back Romney in 1994. Like Kennedy, Obama turned Romney into a businessman with a heart of cold. Once tagged, it was hard for Romney to change minds.
Beyond Bain, Romney failed the larger trust test. At the end of the day, Americans need to believe in a basic reliability in the person they send to the White House. On Election Day, Americans still didn't know which Romney they would be electing. The Salt Lake Tribune put it best in an editorial explaining why the newspaper was endorsing Obama: There were "too many Mitts."
Would President Romney be the moderate governor of Massachusetts or the "severely conservative" Romney of Republican primary days?
Romney promised to create 12 million jobs, but never explained how. What was his magic formula for cutting taxes and increasing defense spending? He never shared it. Would he repeal Obamacare or salvage parts of it? No one could be sure.
In the final days of the campaign, Team Romney ran an ad claiming that Jeep production would be outsourced to China. Chrysler and GM angrily refuted the charge.
The Jeep ad took special chutzpah, since Bain was criticized for acquiring companies that outsourced jobs to China. It underscored the Romney trust problem that Kennedy — and Obama — exposed.
Joan Vennochi writes for the Boston Globe.