A report Thursday in The New York Times about the Reverend Wright proposal put Mr. Romney on the defensive on a day his campaign had hoped to trumpet its fund-raising parity with Mr. Obama in April. Mr. Romney sought to turn the tables Thursday afternoon by accusing Mr. Obama of running a campaign based on personal attacks.

“I’ve been disappointed in the president’s campaign to date, which has been about character assassination,” Mr. Romney said, adding that an ad by the Obama campaign about his work at Bain Capital was meant to suggest that “I’m not a good person, or a good guy.”

He said the campaign should be “about the future.”

“It’s about jobs and kids,” Mr. Romney said.

The Times reported Thursday on a detailed plan to be financed by Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade and patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs, to use Mr. Wright’s “black liberation” rhetoric against the president, who attended Mr. Wright’s church for years. The plan was presented to the Ending Spending Action Fund, a ”super PAC” run by Mr. Ricketts.

Asked about the report in the morning, Mr. Romney declined to comment, saying he had not read the newspapers. Later, his campaign issued a statement repudiating the plan. Aides later scurried to provide Mr. Romney an opportunity on camera to distance himself from the plan.

By the afternoon, Mr. Ricketts had also formally rejected the idea. A spokesman said it had never been Mr. Ricketts’s idea in the first place, though documents obtained by the Times showed that Mr. Ricketts was more than a passing participant.