When the Romney campaign perjured Romney (retroactively)

Maybe I buried my lede on July 13, so forgive a restatement:

In her email to the Boston Globe demanding a correction of its report on Romney's tenure at Bain from 1999-2002, Romney's communications director Gail Gitcho either confirmed that Romney perjured himself in his Massachusetts residency hearing in June 2002 or endorsed a false statement by Bain about that tenure.

The Romney campaign's 2011 statement that "Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way" does not contradict Romney's assertion, while striving to prove establish his Massachusetts for his gubernatorial run in 2002, that he returned to Massachusetts periodically during his Olympic tenure to attend board meetings for past and present Bain portfolio companies. Those companies are not "Bain Capital entities."

A Bain statement issued on July 12, however, does contradict that assertion: Romney, it says,“has had absolutely no involvement with the management or investment activities of the firm or with any of its portfolio companies since the day of his departure” in 1999" (my emphasis).

Gitcho's email to Globe cites the Bain statement:

Romney campaign contradicts Romney testimony

Romney is very good at splitting hairs to avoid literally lying, or to hold two almost-contradictory positions at once (Romneycare good! Obamacare bad!  Bailouts bad! Rescue of financial system in crisis good! Managed bankruptcy good! Obama's managed bankruptcies of GM/Chrysler bad!). 

Therefore, I am a little surprised to note that the Romney campaign has slipped up in its characterizations of Romney's leave of absence from Bain when he was running the Olympics in 1999-2002. Yesterday, the campaign contradicted testimony that Romney provided to the Massachusetts Ballot Commission in June 2002 in a way that they had previously avoided.

As I noted yesterday, the Romney campaign's 2011 statement that "Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way" does not contradict Romney's assertion, while striving to prove establish his Massachusetts for his gubernatorial run in 2002, that he returned to Massachusetts periodically during his Olympic tenure to attend board meetings for past and present Bain portfolio companies. Those companies are not "Bain Capital entities." 

Some wispy hints that Romney was not 100% hands-off at Bain, 1999-2002

Personally, I think that the charge that Romney as CEO and owner of Bain Capital "shipped jobs overseas" is meaningless, except insofar as it offsets Romney's hypocritical and bogus charge that Obama is substantially responsible for further loss of manufacturing jobs to China and elsewhere. Offshoring is inevitable: to cope, the U.S. must improve its education system and upgrade jobs currently considered low-end, which means strengthening workers' hands relative to management.

Further, Factcheck.org and other truth-squaders have a point in calling out the Obama campaign for claiming that Romney "shipped jobs overseas" when alluding to the activities of Bain portfolio companies that occurred after Romney took over the Winter Olympics in early 1999.  Today's Globe story documenting Romney's maintenance of formal or nominal control during his Olympic years really doesn't affect the argument between the Obama campaign and Factcheck, as Stephanie Cutter's letter to Factcheck, like the Globe article, alluded to numerous Bain SEC filings listing Romney as CEO, President, and owner of various Bain entities, including the parent company. Factcheck retorts that there is no positive evidence that Romney ever took an active role in any Bain decision or action during his Olympic gig. And Fortune's Dan Primack has been supplied with offering documents for funds that Bain started after Romney went to Utah that don't list Romney as a fund manager.