Romney's Bain Explanation Doesn't Fly

So did Mitt Romney stop running the show at Bain in 1999 or 2002? Romney would have us believe 1999, and Bain backs him up with the explanation that it took time for all of the formalities to take effect. At Salon, however, Steve Kornacki sees a problem with that official line: Romney himself has said previously that when he left in 1999 to run the Olympics, he considered it merely a leave of absence. He had taken two of them before, in fact. It's logical, then, that Romney "would have held on to his leadership titles at Bain" because he planned to return once the Olympics were over, writes Kornacki.

As such, he would have maintained at least some level of engagement in Bain decisions during that time. Certainly, he wasn't calling all the shots from from 1999 to 2002, writes Kornacki. "But the story he tells now absolves him of all responsibility for anything and everything Bain did in those years. This would be reasonable if Romney had forged a clear and total break with the company in 1999, but he didn’t." Read the full column here. (More Mitt Romney 2012 stories.)