WASHINGTON: Barack Obama may have made his name peddling hope and change, but his aspiration politics concealed a ruthless streak now being turned on the man who wants his job: Mitt Romney.
President Obama and his hard-eyed political consultants have unleashed a long-planned attack on the Republican's corporate past, seeking to turn November's election on Romney's character rather than his own economic record.
The president, who did not hesitate to go negative on Democratic primary foe Hillary Clinton in 2008 and has proven a steely commander-in-chief, is now seeking to debunk Romney's claim that his business wizardry could create jobs.
Obama insists his attack on multi-millionaire Romney's time as head of asset management firm Bain Capital is not only fair game but germane to the economic anxieties of middle class America.
"This is not a distraction, this is what the campaign is going to be about," Obama said at a Chicago press conference on Monday.
"If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, 'I knew how to make a lot of money for investors' then you're missing what this job is about."
Vice President Joe Biden pursued the attack on Tuesday. "Making money for your investors, which Romney did very well, is not the president's job," he said.
"When you're president, your job is to see to it that companies can make a profit, but not maximize profit at everyone's expense. Your job is to think about the workers who get laid off."
The Obama campaign paints Romney as a heartless corporate raider, saying Bain saddled firms it bought with huge debts, before forcing them into bankruptcy and turfing workers out of jobs.
Senior Obama aides say the attacks, thrust home by doom-laden negative ads in swing states and by the president on the campaign trail, will soon be bolstered with an examination of Romney's record as Massachusetts governor.
Romney has barely talked about his governance of the liberal state partly because he passed a health care law similar to Obama's signature national reform -- which Republicans abhor.
The Obama camp is clearly trying to define Romney negatively to voters, before a likely summer lull in the campaign.
"Obama doesn't really do anything off the cuff. If we have learned one thing about this president, it is that he is very calculating," said Christopher Malone, professor of political science at Pace University in New York.
"They have made a calculated decision and that decision is... focusing on Romney as a financier... who was all about getting profits for his shareholders and not the collective good."
Malone said Obama's strategy was designed to fire up Democratic voters keen to see some red meat from the president and would not damage him too badly in the political center.
But could the assault irk the independent voters that the president needs to prevail in battleground states?
Senior Obama aides say they have zero concern that it will, and believe Obama's appeal to "fairness" and an economy where everyone, not just the rich, get a fair shot, encapsulates the feelings of many Americans.
Romney's campaign has those same independent voters in its sights too. Campaign operatives have seized on criticism of Obama's populist venting from moderate Democrats.
Obama ally Cory Booker, mayor of the major financial hub of Newark, New Jersey, called the attacks "nauseating" on Sunday on NBC television, sending the Romney rapid response team into overdrive.
Other Obama supporters have rallied around however: South Carolina lawmaker Jim Clyburn accused Bain on MSNBC of "raping companies."
Romney wants to turn the focus of the election back on Obama, amid 8.1 percent unemployment and concerns the lagging recovery could be slowing.
"The American people know that this election is about the 23 million of their fellow citizens who are struggling to find work, not desperate political attacks from a president who doesn't have what it takes to get our economy moving again," said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul.
Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also hit back. "All of these are efforts to deflect attention away from the president's record," McConnell said, as a new ABC News/Washington Post poll out Tuesday put Romney and Obama tied at 47 percent each on who best can handle.
Now that Obama is personally leading the assault on Romney, there will be pressure on the Republican to offer a more personal explanation of his past.
Romney's effort to turn the focus back on Obama will also benefit if the pace of job creation continues to drag. The economy only produced 115,000 jobs in April, well short of the 200,000 level many analysts believe Obama needs to have comfortable reelection hopes.
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