The Obama campaign did the predictable and released a campaign ad attacking Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital record today.

What was not predictable was the Romney campaign’s rapid response to this ad.

You have to wonder if the campaign had this ad already produced, knowing this line of attack would be used. One thing that should be very clear, the Romney campaign is not going to make the same mistakes as the McCain campaign. Romney will not let the President set the narrative of this campaign. According to Byron York ,they are prepared for this line of attack:

First, the campaign has carefully scrutinized Romney’s entire record at Bain and believes it is a strongly positive one overall. But that is the big picture — there are individual instances in which Bain investments failed. Given that, look for the Romney campaign and its surrogates to counterattack by focusing on an instance in which Barack Obama, in essence, took over a company and laid people off in an effort to save the larger enterprise. That was, of course, the auto bailouts, and while Obama often cites his success in “saving” the car industry, few remember today how many (non-union) workers lost their jobs in the Obama administration’s handling of the matter. During the economic crisis, General Motors and Chrysler shut down more than 700 dealerships, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs. And the companies did it under pressure from Obama.

This is going to be a long campaign and the Romney campaign seems up to the task of going toe-to-toe with the President.