President Obama has been taking the line that Mitt Romney’s business experience doesn’t qualify him for high office because being President is not about “maximizing profits.” But Jake Tapper asks a good question in this afternoon’s press briefing:
TAPPER: [W]hy would the White House or the president conclude that because Mitt Romney ran his private equity firm a certain way that he would run the country the same way? … The president took his experience; it didn’t mean he started running the country like a community organizer or like a state senator. He just had experience.
CARNEY: Well, no, but the experience he had as a community organizer and state senator and then as a United States senator were the experience he believes helped qualify him for the presidency. He’d made the case and — that that record –
TAPPER: But he didn’t do it as the community organizer; he did it as a president. And my only — my question is why are you — why are you saying that he would run things as—
CARNEY: Well, because the governor himself — the former governor himself as said as much. He’s not running, that I can tell, on his record — or that you can, because he hasn’t — on his record in Massachusetts. He’s running as a businessman who can do for America what he did in private equity. And that, I think — I think Americans would expect that that credential deserves some scrutiny.
The rest of the exchange here.