For a moment, at least, presidential campaigns get back to issues

On the Sunday TV talk shows, presidential campaign surrogates of both parties zeroed in on Medicare. But inevitably, Mitt Romney's so-far unreleased tax returns came up too.

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"We reject that in our analysis," Gillespie said. He said Romney's overall plans, including a higher eligibility age, eventually would slow the program's growth.

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"There was going to be a battle about Medicare, no matter what,” Republican political consultant and policy advisor Karl Rove said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“The question was: Was it going to be left to what the Democrats traditionally do – which is late-night phone calls in the final week of the campaigns, to seniors, and scary mail pieces?” said Rove. Or were we going to have a full-out, honest debate? And we're having, for what passes in politics, a full-out, honest debate about it."

Romney’s personal finances – including his so-far unreleased tax returns – remain an issue, not only for Democrats but for some prominent Republicans and conservative pundits who have urged him to be more forthcoming.

"Look, Mitt Romney is a highly educated man. And he has clearly made a decision that what is in those tax returns is far more damaging to him than to do what every presidential candidate has done, which is show the American people your personal finances," Obama campaign senior adviser Robert Gibbs told "Fox News Sunday."

“We know that he has been engaged in tax-avoidance schemes with offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and the Bahamas,” Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley (D) said on NBC's "Meet the Press.” “It’s not unlawful, but it is tax avoidance.

Romney surrogates did their best to change the subject.

“This isn’t what the American people care about,” retorted Virginia Gov. Robert McDonnell (R) “This is below their dignity. This is about how do we get the greatest country on earth out of debt and back to work. And Obama just flat failed. Nice guy, bad policies. Hasn’t gotten the job done.”

Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom insisted Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that “taxes are not an issue.”

"Mitt Romney has said he'll put out two years of tax returns,” he said. “He put out his 2010 return, hundreds of pages of tax return information that’s on the website. He’ll put out his 2011 returns once it's complete and filed.”

But that’s unlikely to satisfy most people as Democratic operatives continue to needle Romney on the apparent secrecy involving his personal finances. A CNN/ORC poll published this month showed 61 percent of registered voters believe Romney should release more than two years of tax returns.