It would, however, perfectly fit the narrative that Obama has been running on ever since he began his national political career. "Right now, we have a tax code that gives incentives for companies to move offshore. Instead, we must have a tax code that rewards companies that are doing the right thing." That isn't an attack ad, that's state legislator Obama running for Senate in June 2004, as quoted by the Chicago Defender. Running for president in May 2008, he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer, "We have seen a lack of shared prosperity. So, you've got CEOs making more in a day than ordinary workers are making in a year, and it's the CEO that's getting the tax break, instead of the workers." He even pledged in that interview, "I will raise CEO taxes. There is no doubt about it." Since that campaign and at least until 2010, Obama has criticized the Bush tax cuts as "tax cuts for people who don't need them and weren't even asking for them." And last September, in his jobs speech at Congress, he struck a familiar refrain on the lack of fairness in the tax system. "While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary -- an outrage he has asked us to fix." Eleven days later, he gave another speech, saying Republicans should have to defend tax "unfairness -- explain why somebody who's making $50 million a year in the financial markets should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50,000 a year is paying more than that -- paying a higher rate. They ought to have to answer for it."

That attempt to make Buffett — a guy who supports Obama — an example of one of the people who benefit from an unfair system didn't go so well. Especially for Buffett's secretary. And in fact, Democrats have struggled since at least 2005 to find the perfect tax villain for their pro-middle class tax argument.

Until Romney.

Bit by bit, often fueled by his own attempts to deflect the story of the day, Romney has been helping to make this caricature stick. When Romney gave in to pressure to release tax information for the last two years, the returns showed that Romney paid that exact same low 15 percent rate Obama had mentioned. Plus, part of that was a $77,000 deduction for expenses related to his wife's horse sport. The Romney campaign spin was that there was nothing unusual about that, which is exactly what 2004-2012 Obama has been saying. To absolve himself of blame for lay-offs and outsourcing Romney said he didn't have anything to do with management decisions at Bain after February 1999. When it became clear that he was still legally in control of the company until 2002 and still is paid millions by it, Romney was lured into admitting he gets paid for nothing.