Obama Campaign's New Attack on Romney's Record as Governor How can President Obama defeat Mitt Romney? That question is at the heart of an effort by Mr. Obama's campaign strategists to test the impact of its potentially most potent attacks against the president's rival. In rapid-fire fashion, Mr. Obama's Chicago headquarters has been auditioning a series of negative narratives that might disqualify the Republican as a legitimate alternative to sit in the Oval Office: Mr. Romney as corporate raider at Bain Capital, Mr. Romney as enemy of women, Mr. Romney as friend of the birther movement. Now, add to that list: Mr. Romney as failed governor. In a detailed memo released Wednesday night by David Axelrod, Mr. Obama's senior campaign strategist, the campaign argues that Mr. Romney's time as governor of Massachusetts provides no legitimate basis for him to ascend to the presidency. "Romney campaigned for governor on the promises of more jobs, decreased debt and smaller government," Mr. Axelrod writes in the memo. When he left office, however, state debt had increased, the size of government had grown, and over his four years, Massachusetts's record of job creation was among the worst in the nation. He concludes: "The facts are clear - it didn't work then, and it won't work now." Mr. Axelrod and Massachusetts state lawmakers are holding a news conference Thursday morning in Boston on the steps of the Statehouse as a way of drawing media attention to the attacks. The news conference was designed to be a secret until the morning, but word leaked out Wednesday night. The campaign is also releasing a Web video called "Broken Promises" that documents the Democratic case against Mr. Romney's tenure as governor. The four-minute video shows interviews with former and current local politicians in Massachusetts complaining about his tenure as governor. So far, Mr. Obama's campaign has put little money behind the assault on Mr. Romney's Massachusetts record. In fact, the campaign has spent very little to push any of their negative attacks. Instead, they have sought to maximize press attention and Internet chatter in an attempt to see what works and what doesn't. The criticism of Mr. Romney's years at Bain were leveled a couple of weeks ago with just a tiny amount of advertising. The mocking of Mr. Romney as a friend of Donald Trump came in a Web video that didn't run on any television or cable networks. And the assault on Mr. Romney's experience as governor is - so far - mostly just talk. That strategy will eventually end. Mr. Obama's campaign is amassing a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars that it will eventually spend to saturate battleground states with its messages and compete with Mr. Romney and outside political groups. But which messages? The decision by Mr. Obama's campaign to unload its political arsenal this spring gives them the chance to gauge how the attacks are received by the press, swing voters, activists and others. It also gives them a low-cost way of seeing Mr. Romney's response. After the Bain attacks, Mr. Romney's campaign responded by accusing the president and his allies of an assault on free enterprise. For Mr. Obama's campaign, it was instructive. And the media and Twitter interest - especially after Mr. Obama embraced the Bain attacks during the NATO summit in Chicago - provided more information. The new attacks on Mr. Romney's record as governor may be more of the same. The Web video costs the campaign little. And the surprise news conference is intended to generate news coverage of the critique. In the long memo, Mr. Axelrod offers a list of allegations about Mr. Romney's time as the state's chief executive. There is a section on "Romney's Record on Jobs," another on "Romney's Record on Taxes," another on "Romney's Record on Deficit and Debt" and a fourth on "Romney's Record on the Size of Government." In each, Mr. Axelrod argues that Mr. Romney made things worse for the citizens of the commonwealth. "He carried his experience as a corporate buyout specialist to the Statehouse in Massachusetts," Mr. Axelrod says. But in the end, Romney Economics actually resulted in fewer jobs, more debt and bigger government. Mr. Romney's campaign reacted acidly. "This is another desperate attack from President Obama because he has no positive record to run on," said Andrea Saul, a spokeswoman for the Romney campaign. Mitt Romney created more jobs in the state of Massachusetts than President Obama has for the entire nation. In a detailed response, Ms. Saul offered statistics about the decline in the state's unemployment rate (to 4.7 from 5.6 percent) during Mr. Romney's term. And she noted that personal income grew by 14 percent - more than it did in the nation at large. The back-and-forth between the two campaigns also serves to provide a constant stream of punch-counterpunch that is now demanded by the Internet-fueled media. But with more than five months left before voters go to the polls, both campaigns are shadow-boxing - throwing punches more to see whether they land than to try to knock out their opponent. When it gets closer to the end, Mr. Obama's team will recycle many of the attacks, fine-tuned by the lessons they have learned during the spring. How the campaign spends its millions will demonstrate publicly what it has learned about Mr. Romney's potential vulnerabilities and how to shape a message that resonates with voters. In the meantime, another day on the 2012 campaign trail likely means another attack on Mr. Romney's record. And vice versa.