The Bain Shadow Years Loom Larger
by David S. Bernstein
Increased scrutiny of this discrepancy potentially hurts Romney in a number of ways.
First of all, there's Romney's "buck stops here" problem; the buck never seems to stop with him. Everything bad that's ever happened under him -- especially involving Bain -- he always blames on other people, and that just isn't very Presidential. The shadow years look like that in a huge way.
It also reinforces the image of Romney as part of the specially insulated corporate overlord class, who get to manipulate the rules so that they always end up the winner. (I have previously dubbed this "Romney's no-lose life"). He apparently was able to make a lot of money (or at least, what seems like a lot of money to most people) for being president, owner, and investor in a company while actually being off in Utah doing a completely different full-time job.
And, of course, he was apparently freely signing off on anything required of the president and owner, without, apparently, feeling like that meant he actually had any responsibility for anything happening at the company. It looks like legal, regulatory, and fiduciary responsibilities don't really mean anything to super-wealthy executive types -- not like when regular people sign employment documents, or mortgage documents, and so on.
The elevation of the shadow years issue will also increase pressure significantly for Romney to release additional personal financial information, including the tax returns that would indicate his income from Bain Capital sources during that time.