What did Mitt Romney know about Bain Capital operations and when, precisely, did he stop knowing it? I don’t have the answer and, to be honest, I’m not sure how much I should care.

The controversy right now is over whether Romney had significant responsibilities at Bain after February, 1999, when he took charge of the Salt Lake City Olympics. The timing matters politically because, after that date, Bain invested in a number of firms that outsourced jobs in politically embarrassing ways. Romney has said he had no active role in decision-making after leaving for Utah. But media outlets, particularly the Boston Globe, have produced evidence that Romney continued to attend meetings and, of course, remained on the firm’s corporate filings as its chief executive. The Globe also reported today that Romney’s story about Bain “evolved” in 2002, when he was running for governor and his Democratic opponent attacked him for Bain’s recent investments. It was then he adopted his current position—that his work for Bain ended when the Olympics began. Previously, he had described his role after 1999 as a “part-timer.”

The shift certainly has the whiff of deception about it. Even more damning information may yet come to light, reflecting more poorly on Romney's character. But, substantively speaking, this controversy is largely telling us something we already knew: That Romney helped develop and then employed business practices that generated large profits for investors, made companies more efficient, and frequently led to layoffs. (The seminal text on this issue remains the Romney profile Ben Wallace-Wells wrote for New York magazine last fall.)

By itself, this shouldn’t disqualify Romney from being president. As writers like Matt Yglesias have pointed out, outsourcing is an almost inevitable by-product of capitalism and not necessarily a bad thing. When firms can produce the same goods for less money, they can then sell those goods at lower prices, enabling many more people to buy them. Firms also can make bigger profits, attracting more investment for growth, creating new jobs even as they shed old ones. In theory, an economy in which companies are frequently outsourcing can still be an economy that grows quickly and spreads prosperity broadly.

But the key phrase there is “in theory.” And that gets to the real problem with Romney, one that the Obama campaign’s new, devastating advertisement (see below) captures perfectly.