[h=3]By SARA MURRAY and DANNY YADRON[/h]Mitt Romney went on a full-throated media offensive Friday evening to dispute allegations that he was dishonest about his tenure at the helm of Bain Capital .
Moving aggressively to blunt the damage caused by Democratic attacks, the GOP presidential candidate gave interviews to five television networks. The appearances capped a week in which the 2012 race took on a biting tone with Mr. Romney accusing the president of lying and the Obama campaign saying Mr. Romney may have committed a felony.
"What kind of a president would have a campaign that says something like that about the nominee of another party?" the GOP candidate said in a CBS News interview. "This is reckless and absurd on his part and it's something which is beneath his dignity."
The Romney campaign has been hammered by accusations that Mr. Romney has been dishonest about the length of his tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital and that he's using the confusion to skirt responsibility for businesses Bain invested in that either lost jobs or shipped them overseas.
The Obama campaign is aiming to undercut the qualification Mr. Romney says is central to his candidacy: His business experience. They've focused on a period when Mr. Romney had left Bain Capital to lead the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
Mr. Romney and Bain Capital both maintain he gave up his management responsibilities at the firm in February 1999. However, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a number of Bain Capital-related entities identified Mr. Romney as chief executive, chairman, and president through January 2002. Those filings sparked further controversy when an Obama aide said the Republican may have broken the law for misrepresenting himself in the SEC filings.
On Friday, President Barack Obama in an interview with Washington, D.C.'s ABC affiliate, directly addressed the matter. "My understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does," he said.
Mr. Romney said again that the buck did not stop with him at Bain Capital between 1999, when he left to head the Salt Lake City Olympics operation and 2002, when he transferred his shares in Bain to active partners.
"Actually when you leave an enterprise, when you have other people who are managing the enterprise, who take responsibility for all the investment decisions, who decide who's going to get hired and fired, who decide compensation decisions, they're the managers," he told CBS News. He also said: "The documents show that there's a difference between ownership, which is I owned shares in Bain, but I did not manage Bain."
Government officials and a Republican who ran the SEC from 2001 to 2003 said in interviews that it is not unusual for the top shareholder, or person with the "controlling" interest, to be listed on SEC documents.
Reports also emerged this week that Mr. Romney traveled back and forth from Utah to Massachusetts in 2002 to attend meetings for companies like Staples Inc., one of Bain's investments.
Mr. Romney said, at that point, Bain had ended its investment with Staples. "Bain Capital had already sold its shares or distributed its shares in Staple's," Mr. Romney said in a CNN interview. "And so my involvement with Staple's was entirely on a personal basis."
The unusual media blitz reflects concern in the Romney camp that some of the Democratic attacks have been effective. A recent poll showed more swing-state voters viewed Mr. Romney's business experience negatively than positively. Other polls showed Mr. Romney losing his edge on the handling the economy, the primary tenet of his candidacy.
The Obama campaign has cast the Republican as one of the most secretive nominees in history, as they've called for more details about his business background and his financial holdings.
In his interview with CNN, Mr. Romney also said he would be releasing one more tax return. Earlier this year, he released his complete 2010 tax return and his estimated taxes for 2011. He had filed an extension for that year. He said he planned "to put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that's what we're going to put out."
Talking to Fox News he said two years of returns would be "plenty." For years, presidential candidates have typically released many years of their tax returns, a tradition begun when Mr. Romney's father, George Romney, ran for president in 1968.
Mr. Romney acknowledged his two-year cap would do little to silence his critics. "I understand that the opposition research people at the Obama campaign want more information that they can try and dig through," Mr. Romney told NBC News.
A day after attending a fundraiser with former Vice President Dick Cheney -- and amid rumors that Mr. Romney was considering George W. Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a running mate -- he also sought to distance himself from Mr. Bush's administration.
"My policies, as related to foreign policy and related to domestic policy, are mine. They're not the carbon copy of any persons in the past," Mr. Romney told CNN. He added: "what we have to do to get this economy going is very different than what happened under prior presidencies of President Bush."
—Patrick O'Connor, Alicia Mundy and Neil King contributed to this articleWrite to Sara Murray at [email protected] and Danny Yadron at [email protected]
Moving aggressively to blunt the damage caused by Democratic attacks, the GOP presidential candidate gave interviews to five television networks. The appearances capped a week in which the 2012 race took on a biting tone with Mr. Romney accusing the president of lying and the Obama campaign saying Mr. Romney may have committed a felony.
"What kind of a president would have a campaign that says something like that about the nominee of another party?" the GOP candidate said in a CBS News interview. "This is reckless and absurd on his part and it's something which is beneath his dignity."
The Romney campaign has been hammered by accusations that Mr. Romney has been dishonest about the length of his tenure at private-equity firm Bain Capital and that he's using the confusion to skirt responsibility for businesses Bain invested in that either lost jobs or shipped them overseas.
The Obama campaign is aiming to undercut the qualification Mr. Romney says is central to his candidacy: His business experience. They've focused on a period when Mr. Romney had left Bain Capital to lead the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics.
Mr. Romney and Bain Capital both maintain he gave up his management responsibilities at the firm in February 1999. However, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission on a number of Bain Capital-related entities identified Mr. Romney as chief executive, chairman, and president through January 2002. Those filings sparked further controversy when an Obama aide said the Republican may have broken the law for misrepresenting himself in the SEC filings.
On Friday, President Barack Obama in an interview with Washington, D.C.'s ABC affiliate, directly addressed the matter. "My understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does," he said.
Mr. Romney said again that the buck did not stop with him at Bain Capital between 1999, when he left to head the Salt Lake City Olympics operation and 2002, when he transferred his shares in Bain to active partners.
"Actually when you leave an enterprise, when you have other people who are managing the enterprise, who take responsibility for all the investment decisions, who decide who's going to get hired and fired, who decide compensation decisions, they're the managers," he told CBS News. He also said: "The documents show that there's a difference between ownership, which is I owned shares in Bain, but I did not manage Bain."
Government officials and a Republican who ran the SEC from 2001 to 2003 said in interviews that it is not unusual for the top shareholder, or person with the "controlling" interest, to be listed on SEC documents.
Reports also emerged this week that Mr. Romney traveled back and forth from Utah to Massachusetts in 2002 to attend meetings for companies like Staples Inc., one of Bain's investments.
Mr. Romney said, at that point, Bain had ended its investment with Staples. "Bain Capital had already sold its shares or distributed its shares in Staple's," Mr. Romney said in a CNN interview. "And so my involvement with Staple's was entirely on a personal basis."
The unusual media blitz reflects concern in the Romney camp that some of the Democratic attacks have been effective. A recent poll showed more swing-state voters viewed Mr. Romney's business experience negatively than positively. Other polls showed Mr. Romney losing his edge on the handling the economy, the primary tenet of his candidacy.
The Obama campaign has cast the Republican as one of the most secretive nominees in history, as they've called for more details about his business background and his financial holdings.
In his interview with CNN, Mr. Romney also said he would be releasing one more tax return. Earlier this year, he released his complete 2010 tax return and his estimated taxes for 2011. He had filed an extension for that year. He said he planned "to put out the next year of tax returns as soon as the accountants have that ready. And that's what we're going to put out."
Talking to Fox News he said two years of returns would be "plenty." For years, presidential candidates have typically released many years of their tax returns, a tradition begun when Mr. Romney's father, George Romney, ran for president in 1968.
Mr. Romney acknowledged his two-year cap would do little to silence his critics. "I understand that the opposition research people at the Obama campaign want more information that they can try and dig through," Mr. Romney told NBC News.
A day after attending a fundraiser with former Vice President Dick Cheney -- and amid rumors that Mr. Romney was considering George W. Bush's Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a running mate -- he also sought to distance himself from Mr. Bush's administration.
"My policies, as related to foreign policy and related to domestic policy, are mine. They're not the carbon copy of any persons in the past," Mr. Romney told CNN. He added: "what we have to do to get this economy going is very different than what happened under prior presidencies of President Bush."
—Patrick O'Connor, Alicia Mundy and Neil King contributed to this articleWrite to Sara Murray at [email protected] and Danny Yadron at [email protected]