Things are beginning to get down and dirty in the Race for the White House.

Politico.com has the story:

President Barack Obama said Mitt Romney should answer questions about his ties to Bain Capital — and soon — in an interview taped Friday with WJLA.

The interview came as a series of Romney interviews were set to air Friday evening, following days of attention to questions about when the Republican candidate exited the venture capital firm and stopped leading day-to-day operations.

“My understanding is that Mr. Romney attested to the SEC, multiple times, that he was the chairman, CEO and president of Bain Capital and I think most Americans figure if you are the chairman, CEO and president of a company that you are responsible for what that company does,” Obama said.

Obama told Scott Thuman of WJLA, the ABC affiliate in the Washington, D.C., area, that Romney “absolutely” must answer questions about his tenure at Bain and whether it continued past 1999 — when Romney has said in the past he left — to 2002, as Securities and Exchange Commission documents suggest.

“If he aspires to being president, one of the things you learn is, you are ultimately responsible for the conduct of your operations, that’s probably a question that he’s going to have to answer, and I think that’s a legitimate part of the campaign,” Obama said in the interview, which was conducted earlier Friday in Virginia Beach, Va.

The coverage area of WJLA — which shares a corporate parent, Albritton Communications, with POLITICO — includes Northern Virginia, a key region of the state that pushed Obama to victory in 2008. The election in Virginia is again expected to be close and hard-fought this year.

The president suggested Romney had ultimate responsibility over the company.

“As president of the United States, it’s pretty clear to me that I’m responsible for folks who are working in the federal government and you know, Harry Truman said the buck stops with you,” he said.

On 7/2/2010, I posted a Blog titled: The Great Disconnect, Part 3: The Chicago Ascent

Let’s hop in the Wayback Machine, Sherman, and check into Obama’s run for the Illinois State Senate, shall we?

In 1995 “Bomber” Bill Ayers and his wife Bernadette Dohrn hosted a fund-raiser for Obama prior to Obama’s run for Alice Palmer’s seat in the state Senate and Ayers donated $200 to Obama’s upcoming state Senate campaign.

In 1996 at age 34, he ran for the state Senate in dubious campaign that is barely known of, outside of Chicago. Alice Palmer, the incumbent, had decided to run for Congress and supported Obama as her successor. But after Palmer’s congressional campaign ran into trouble, she changed her mind and decided to run for re-election to the Illinois Senate after all. Obama refused to step aside and the melee ensued. One of Scooter’s volunteers challenged whether Palmer’s nominating petitions were even legal. Obama’s campaign pulled the same chicanery concerning the petitions of other candidates. Palmer dropped out, and the other candidates were disqualified. So, Obama won unopposed in the Democratic primary—guaranteeing his victory in the general election. This was truly an example of Chicago-style politics at it’s finest…or dirtiest.

Around this same time, at a Bill Clinton White House event, philanthropist Walter Annenberg announced that he was making a $500 million grant to cities across the nation to put towards the reform of public schools. Bill Ayers was the head of the Chicago group that, with$49.2 million in hand, formed the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The launch party in 1995 was attended by the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago, as well as anybody was influential among the Chicago Political Elite. Guess who the first chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was? You guessed. Obama held the post until 1999. At that time, he stepped down and remained on the board. Bill Ayers worked closely with the Challenge as a leader of the newly formed Chicago School Reform Collaborative.

They also both served on the board of the charitable Woods Fund of Chicago from 1999 to 2002. Just a “guy from the neighborhood”. Huh, Scooter?

Additionally, Scooter served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002. This foundation started as the financial back-up plan of a widow whose family had made millions in the lumber industry.

After her death, it was run by philanthropic people who increasingly dedicated their giving to Liberal causes, including gun control, environmentalism and school changes. It has grown over the years until it is now bigger than the TIDES Foundation and actually funds it.

The Joyce Foundation in 2000 and 2001 provided the capital outlay to start the Chicago Climate Exchange. It started trading in 2003, and what it trades is, believe it or not, air.

What a coincidence, that, as president, pushing cap-and-trade is one of his highest priorities, huh?

Back to the Future (Hey, that’s catchy. It would make a great movie title.  Oh, wait. Never mind.)…

Romney is finally manning up and fighting back, according to abcnews.go.com:

Mitt Romney wants President Obama to apologize for his campaign’s suggestion that the Republican candidate could have broken the law by making inaccurate statements to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Romney told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl late this afternoon that Obama should clean up his campaign staff after officials coordinated an effort to imply that Romney committed a felony by saying he left Bain Capital in 1999, though The Boston Globe reported this week that Romney was listed as the company’s CEO until 2002 on official files.

“The president needs to take control of these people,” Romney said. “He ought to disavow it and rein in these people who are running out of control.”

Romney added, “He sure as heck ought to say that he’s sorry for the kinds of attacks that are coming from his team.”

Romney insisted that he abandoned the private-equity firm he founded to run the Olympics and that, after 1999, he had “no role whatsoever in the management” of Bain even though SEC documents listed him as president, chairman of the board and sole stockholder.

“I left any responsibility whatsoever, any effort, any involvement whatsoever in the management of Bain Capital after February of 1999,” Romney said.

Obama is proving that he’s not just a “guy in over his head”, he ‘s a vindictive, petulant president with a re-election team weened on Chicago Politics.

Romney is going to have to treat Obama like he did his fellow Republicans, in he wants to win on November 6th.