Romney wants his taxes, business record off table

Mitt Romney made an unusual suggestion in his interview with Chuck Todd yesterday, which First Read previewed thusly:

*** This is business not personal: Romney also said in the interview he would like a pledge (of sorts) with Obama that there be no "personal" attack ads. "[O]ur campaign would be — helped immensely if we had an agreement between both campaigns that we were only going to talk about issues and that attacks based upon — business or family or taxes or things of that nature." (Question: Is Romney really saying that scrutinizing his business record — which he has held up as one of his chief qualifications to be president — is personal? But we

digress. ...) He continued: "[W]e only talk about issues. And we can talk about the differences between our positions and our opponent's position." Romney said of his own campaign: "[O]ur ads haven't gone after the president personally. ... [W]e haven't dredged up the old stuff that people talked about last time around. We haven't gone after the personal things." That doesn't mean surrogates or Super PACs have, as was brought up to him. Bottom line, obviously, this negative stuff is getting to Romney or he wouldn't have said this. Campaigns that are winning never complain about the tone of the campaign (although Obama certainly laments "crazy" things outside groups say — more on that below.). There will be more on this from Romney on MSNBC's The Daily Rundown. Did he just offer the Obama campaign an official pledge? See for yourself.

Talking about candidates' personal finances is hardly novel, nor is it irrelevant — how candidates make their money, however much or how little they've earned over the years, is not only fair game but a legitimate line of inquiry (as the First Read authors note, Romney has also made his business experience his central calling card for the White House). The question of tax returns is also not new (to that end, Romney has said he would also release his 2011 taxes, but has yet to do so, with less than three months to go in the race).

What is surprising is hearing a candidate say, essentially, "stop hitting me." As the folks at First Read note, this would seem to be something of a concession that the negatives are bothering the candidate, whom a round of new national polls shows running at a deficit that exceeds the margin of error. Some of the attacks have indeed gone rather far over the line (the ad that yokes a man's loss of his job due to Bain Capital to his wife's death was at minimum factually off and at most suggests a pretty ugly thing about the candidate). And even some Democrats conceded (privately) that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was harsh in invoking the candidate's dead father (even before the unsubstantiated tax allegations).

But not every attack is the same, and not everything is beyond the pale.

* This post has been updated

Maggie Haberman is senior political reporter for Politico.