Bain Capital, tax returns continue to dog Romney. Can Obama make it stick?

The Sunday TV talk shows were filled with campaign surrogates for Mitt Romney and Barack Obama arguing about Romney's income taxes and his years running Bain Capital. It's meat for political junkies, but do average voters care?

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Meanwhile, Romney’s time at Bain Capital continued to be a point of heated contention Sunday as well, although here it was strictly partisan.

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Among others, Obama spokesperson Stephanie Cutter (on CBS) and adviser David Axelrod (on CNN) weighed in.

"We do know that he said he had no involvement with any of the entities that Bain was involved in, and yet he came back for board meetings," Mr. Axelrod said. "The larger point is he was in charge when they bought these firms whose principal mission was to facilitate outsourcing and offshoring."

Not so, retorted Romney surrogates, who contend that Romney had no hand in managing Bain’s business after 1999, even though he was listed as a senior official until 2002.

"There may have been a thought at the time that [Romney's Bain work] could be part-time. It was not part-time," Romney campaign advisor Ed Gillespie told Candy Crowley on CNN's "State of the Union." "The Olympics was in a shambles. He took a leave of absence and in fact, Candy, ended up not going back at all and retired retroactively to February 1999 as a result.”

Romney backers also repeated their charge that the Chicago-based Obama campaign has gone way beyond the bounds of normal rough-and-tumble politics here.

"It's sad to see," Mr. Gillespie said. "We now know that 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 himself has called on Obama to apologize for his campaign aides’ rhetorical shrapnel, which Romney calls "beneath the dignity of the presidency."

But in a broadcast interview in Virginia Saturday, Obama said, “We will not apologize.”

“Mr. Romney claims he's Mr. fix-it for the economy because of his business experience,” Obama said, “so I think voters entirely legitimately want to know what is exactly his business experience."

Huffington Post reported Sunday that a corporate document filed with the state of Massachusetts in December 2002 – a month after Romney was elected governor – lists him as one of two managing members of Bain Capital Investors, LLC "authorized to execute, acknowledge, deliver and record any recordable instrument purporting to affect an interest in real property, whether to be recorded with a Registry of Deeds or with a District Office of the Land Court."

It remains to be seen whether voters care more about that revelation or they accept Romney campaign advisor Ed Gillespie’s explanation that Romney “retired retroactively to February 1999.”

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