The latest television commercial from President Obama's reelection campaign takes aim at Mitt Romney's history at Bain Capital, painting the Republican challenger as someone who regularly shipped jobs overseas and tried to conceal his Swiss bank account.
The commercial, which begins airing Tuesday in Virginia, Ohio and Iowa, opens with a rebuttal of a recent attack ad from Americans for Prosperity, a conservative super-PAC that just announced a $6.1 million ad buy for a commercial critical of the president's green energy initiatives.
The Obama commercial says "big oil's new attack ad" is "over the top" and "erroneous," citing a
Washington Post fact-check article that objected to parts of the Americans for Prosperity ad. The president's commercial then argues clean energy programs have "created jobs in America, not overseas."
The ad contrasts that with Mitt Romney's record during his time at the helm of Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, claiming Romney sent American jobs to China and Mexico during his time at the investment firm and outsourced state jobs to an Indian call center as governor.
The commercial concludes by mocking a Swiss bank account that Romney did not mention in his initial round of public campaign disclosures. The Republican candidate was not required to do so, and the account was only revealed during a voluntary disclosure of his income taxes during the Republican primary; the Romney campaign said then that the account was closed and had been set up independently by a trustee who handles the Romneys' finances.
“It’s just what you'd expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account,” the narrator of the Obama ad says.
The Obama campaign said they would be placing a "significant buy" on broadcast networks in the swing states but did not disclose how much they would be spending on the commercial.
Last week, senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the campaign would get more aggressive with Romney over his record during a call with reporters.
“For the better part of last year, Romney has tried to tear down President Obama with a dishonest, negative campaign that even other Republicans have criticized,” Axelrod said. “Well, the monologue is over. Now Romney has to put his record and his agenda up against the president’s, and we look forward to that debate."
The Romney campaign blasted the ad as "desperate" in a statement issued Tuesday morning.
“With the worst job creation record in modern history and the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression, President Obama is trying to distract Americans from the real issues with a series of sideshows," said Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg. "Unable to defend his failed record of 23 million Americans struggling for work, wasteful boondoggles like Solyndra, skyrocketing national debt, and unacceptably high energy prices, President Obama has once again resorted to attacking Mitt Romney. The American people have suffered enough over the last three years and deserve better.”
