To be fair, Romney’s accomplishments are a matter of substantial debate.
As head of Bain Capital, he was less a job creator than a vulture capitalist: borrow money to acquire a money-making company, load up the company with that debt, charge the acquired company millions of dollars of management fees, shut down U.S. plants, fire U.S. workers, and move those operations overseas. Some companies survived and did well, others went bankrupt. Bain made gobs of money either way. Not a model for job growth and economic prosperity for the U.S. as a whole. Mitt made hundreds of millions of dollars. His record as a job creator and builder of businesses is pretty weak, however, and unlikely to translate to success as President.
As governor of Massachusetts, he had a mixed record. Like Obama, he inherited an economic mess. He promised more jobs, lower debt, and smaller government. Instead, Massachusetts under Romney was 47th out of 50 states in job creation, taxes and fees increased by $750 million per year, and long-term debt increased more than $2.6 billion. Only a huge outflow of Massachusetts workers to faster growing states kept the unemployment rate from climbing higher. He wasn’t a disaster a governor, but he proved that managing an economy out of a recession is a difficult task.
Would he have done substantially better than Obama in managing our way out of the worst recession since the Great Depression? His record as governor indicates that the answer is “no.” Will he do better than Obama in the coming four years? I doubt very much that he’ll get the chance to show that his brand of “hope and change” will prove anything more than empty promises made on the campaign trail.