Reality Check: Obama's 'What a President believes matters' ad

ORLANDO, Fla. — The following is a transcript of WFTV political analyst Dr. Rick Foglesong’s “Reality Check” segment that aired on Channel 9 on July 13, 2012.

WFTV political analyst Dr. Rick Foglesong assesses a President Barack Obama campaign ad today.

“Elections are not only about policies and personalities:  They’re also about values, and this ad attempts to cast Mitt Romney as someone out of touch with ordinary Americans,” Foglesong said.

Obama strategists know from voter surveys that Romney is potentially vulnerable with white working class voters on the issue of exporting jobs.  That is why they are firing away at him in ad after ad on what he did as CEO at Bain Capital.

The ad erroneously implies that Romney himself was an outsourcing pioneer.  The Washington Post article said Bain Capital was an outsourcing pioneer, not Romney.  And FactCheck.org has shown that Romney was off running the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and not involved in day-to-day operations at Bain in the critical period after 1999 when so much outsourcing occurred.

Parenthetically, the candidate asked the Post to retract their story because it failed to distinguish between outsourcing jobs abroad on one hand and work done overseas to support U.S. exports, but the newspaper refused.

The Obama campaign can fire away on this issue, but if outsourcing jobs disqualified someone from running for president, few corporate executives would apply.

We could have an adult discussion here if both sides admitted first, that CEOs move jobs and investment around the globe these days, not as an ethical choice, but as the way business is done.  And that global recessions reduce job growth under any president, regardless of his economic policies.

Expect to see more ads hammering at Romney’s association with Bain Capital, because polling shows they’re effective.

WFTV