Mitt Romney, in a new interview with Time's Mark Halperin, pares down his biographical argument to its most basic.
"I spent 25 years in the private sector. That obviously teaches you something that you don't learn if you haven't spent any time in the private sector.
.... You learn through life's experience. The president's experience has been exclusively in politics and as a community organizer. Both of those are fine areas of endeavor.
But right now we have an economy in trouble, and someone who spent their career in the economy is more suited to help fix the economy than someone who spent his life in politics and as a community organizer."
In a way, much of the election will turn on whether voters buy that argument -- that 25 years in the private sector is, by definition, better than 0 years.
Obama's team seems to understand the stakes surrounding that message.
Yesterday, Joe Biden claimed that private equity experience wasn't any more significant for being president than plumbing experience. We'll see if that populist message resonates.
