( CNN ) -- As the presidential campaign veers off onto the Bain Capital ramp , the predictable arguments ensue : Is the turn simply a political attack meant to distract from bad economic news ? ( So says Mitt Romney ) . Or is it an important , valid argument at the heart of the contest ? ( So says President Barack Obama . ) 'Other-ness ' : What Obama and Romney have in common on religion , race . Distill all the arguments down to an essential core , and they 're really about one thing : experience . As in , does past experience matter ? Is it an indicator of future behavior ? Or of your values ? And if you behaved one way at another job in your past , what does that tell us about how you would behave as president ? Finally , should your previous experience ( or lack of it ) in any way disqualify you from the presidency ? The arguments over experience are hardly new . In fact , back in the day when then-candidate Obama was a tad short on the experience side , Hillary Clinton made the case that she was the best-equipped to handle foreign policy disasters as president ( See : ad with red phone ringing at 3 am . ) Obama 's response : `` I have shown the judgment to lead . '' Which seemed a fair enough retort . So let 's apply that standard to the Bain Capital fight : Romney 's job was to make money for investors . Bain Capital claims that revenues grew in 80 % of the more than 350 companies in which it has invested . It also makes the case that the Obama campaign 's cause-and-effect simplification of the eventual failure of a paper company -- such as Ampad -- was completely overblown and unfair : Bain bought the company in 1992 , and it grew . Its control ended in 1996 , four years before it folded , although Bain did retain some stake in the company . And it folded , Bain says , because the marketplace changed . It 's more Dunder Mifflin than Darth Vader . And , um , where was the Romney judgment call in this episode ? To be clear : This is a political campaign . Romney 's experience at Bain is certainly relevant . After all , Romney often brags about creating 100,000 jobs , so digging into what happened there under his watch is only natural . The problem with campaigns is that issues and events and results need to be either black or white -- especially in 60-second spots that liken companies such as Bain to vultures . None other than the president himself conceded that there 's some complexity here , as The Washington Post points out in an editorial , which says the president is trying to argue all sides . `` I think there are a whole lot of folks who do good work in that area and there are times where they identify the capacity for the economy to create new jobs or new industries , '' the president said at the NATO summit . Indeed , this is a president who has friends in private equity , who raises money from private equity and is making a pitch to the same folks this time around . ( Full disclosure : A member of my family works in private equity . ) The issue , the president told us , is that the goal of `` maximizing profits '' is way different from what a president does , which is making sure that `` everybody in the country has a fair shot . '' And Romney , he would argue , has no experience at doing that . Understand this : It 's not really just about business . It 's about values . The president may be broader in his approach , but his ads argue a more simple point : that Romney does n't have the right values to be president ; that he does bad things to good people . It might be more lucrative for Obama 's re-election prospects to go after Romney 's actual record -- as a less-than-outstanding job creator as Massachusetts governor . Or as a politician with `` evolving '' views on issues ranging from abortion to immigration . Or to remind independent voters that during the primaries Romney called himself `` severely conservative , '' whatever that means . Some of this is surely in the works . And what about the Obama campaign starting to talk about its own record ? Team Obama may want to turn this into a choice election , but when incumbents run for re-election they have to explain why they should be rehired . `` The Obama people believe they can win this election by criticizing Romney , '' says Bill Galston , a former Clinton administration domestic policy adviser . `` But they 're going to lose this election if American people do n't think they have done a good job . '' One more thing : Obama 's consistent strength is that more than half of Americans really like him . They see him as in touch with their lives and their aspirations . And his poll numbers only increased last year , for instance , when he shared America 's disgust during the distasteful debate over extending the payroll tax cuts . House Republicans seemed in desperate need of day care ; Obama was the adult in the room . That 's what people want . When a president who wants to be transformational runs a campaign that wants to deliver transparent caricatures , there 's a downside . The candidate starts looking like all the other pols . And nobody likes them . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Gloria Borger .
Gloria Borger : President Obama 's argument about Bain Capital is about experience . She says he suggests Mitt Romney lacks background , values to be president . She says Obama would be better off focusing on his record or Romney 's as governor . Borger : Obama 's image could be tarnished by questionable attacks .