“Either Mitt Romney, through his own words and his own signature, was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the SEC, which is a felony…Or, he was misrepresenting his position at Bain to the American people to avoid responsibility for some of the consequences of his investments.”

Dr. J. first became aware of Mr. Romney in 2002 and thought he did a crackerjack job with the Salt Lake Olympics

This charged statement was debunked by Washington Post writer and fact checker Glenn Kessler:

Meanwhile, the weight of evidence suggests that Romney did in fact end active management of Bain in 1999. He stated that in a federal disclosure form he signed, under threat of criminal penalties. 

He said he was a “former employee” in a state disclosure form. A state commission concluded 10 years ago that he did, indeed, leave Bain in 1999. Investors in Bain funds were told he was not part of the management team. 

The SEC documents, especially the ones Romney signed, do raise some questions. One can certainly argue that because Romney did not fully extricate himself from Bain till after his Olympic sojourn ended, he should bear some responsibility for what happened in that period. But that is an entirely different matter than suggesting that he is a potential criminal. It is more of a PR problem, which the Obama campaign is trying to exploit to build a larger case that Romney is secretive. 

We were tempted to award this claim Four Pinocchios, but the documents with his signature leave some room for inquiry. But, overall, they shrink in importance to the other evidence cited above. (Our colleagues at FactCheck.Org also reaffirmed their similar conclusion.) Still, if the Obama campaign wants to put its money where its mouth is, it should immediately lodge a complaint about Romney’s financial disclosure form, filed just last year, rather than try to mislead people about potential violations in relatively unimportant SEC documents.

Now the Washington Post is no Washington Times, and earlier in the article is where the best explanation lies:

We consulted with securities law experts, with many years of experience with these forms. One expert examined this document at our request. He suspected that someone had simply duplicated a filing that had been made many times before, though he acknowledged, “it looks inartful in retrospect.” He pointed out that the titles are basically meaningless, that someone can be listed as a chief executive and actually have no responsibilities whatsoever.”

In other words, there is no proof that Mitt did much of anything after 1999 except that he had investments in the company and titles that were no more than such in the time it took for him to extricate himself from the company.

Where this gets clever by half is that Romney asked for an apology from the Obama campaign for intimating he is a felon. At first Dr. J. was thinking, “WTF!?!?! This is going to make him look like a big old wimp who can’t take the heat of a brutal presidential campaign. No one in his right mind would ask for an apology.” But then the answer to Dr. J.’s question came from no other than the caninabal in chief himself:

No, we will not apologize…

In other words, Mr. Romney has gotten the President to set a very low bar for what he deems fair game and an appropriate tone for the campaign. The President has made the ground rules part of the public record.

If the President wants his surrogates to play the,”He’s a felon or a liar, take your pick” game, then he is playing a high stakes game. His team’s personal attacks on Romney (i.e. the dog on the roof, giving a classmate an unwanted haircut, his wife rides a horse…) to date have been responded to in kind with far more embarrassing examples of behavior from the President (i.e. eating dog, pushing a girl on the playground, his wife’s gone on vacation 12 hours ahead of the president…).

Given that President has conducted himself in office in a manner that sometimes appears in conflict with the scope of his job description as outlined by the constitution; performing recess appointments when congress is not in recess; picking and choosing which laws to enforce or not (DOMA and immigration laws in Arizona); the use of regulations and executive orders that violate citizens’s freedom of religion; and at least offering the appearance of abusing the executive privilege law regarding ‘Fast and Furious,’ he should tread lightly as this campaign strategy will probably not work very well for him.

Now if Mr. Romney is smart, he needs to start going after the President’s record very hard and not only attack it, but with every attack present a concrete and palpable solution to the problem. The voters need to know fairly concretely what he is going to do in addition to why the President has done all the wrong things for four years.

Mr. Romney needs to remember that it is much easier to win when voters are voting for you and your solutions and not just against the other guy.

Dr. J.