private equity. That year, he launched his political career by running for the senate and challenging Senator Edward M. Kennedy. He promoted his record of job creation and building businesses at Bain. Mr. Kennedy turned the tables on Mr. Romney by focusing on American Pad & Paper, or Ampad, a company that, under Bain's ownership, shed factory jobs and cut wages. The Massachusetts senator played television ads featuring laid-off Ampad employees, even though those layoffs occurred after Mr. Romney left Bain. Mr. Romney later acknowledged that he was unprepared for Mr. Kennedy's private equity assault. "He characterized me as a cold-hearted, unfeeling robber baron," said Mr. Romney at the time, in an interview with The Boston Globe. The private-equity-is-evil narrative first emerged during the 1980s, when buyout executives began using large amounts of debt to buy companies. They were branded as "barbarians at the gate," which was the title of a 1990 book about the takeover of RJR Nabisco by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. A year before, in 1990, The Wall Street Journal published a Pulitzer Prize-winning article by Susan Faludi about the human toll of K.K.R.'s leveraged buyout of the grocery chain Safeway. The article opened with a laid-off Safeway truck driver shooting himself in the head. McCain went after him on Bain in 2008. No one defended Mitt then because McCain was that annointed one. False and negative ads are Mitts only real game plan. He never runs on his own record. Gee, Romney's family drives Cadillacs. He must