“What he’s saying,” Romney told the crowd in Bowling Green, “is that if someone has succeeded, if they built something, he’s saying they didn’t really build it — no, it was the government, it was the government that takes responsibility. So for the student in school that works hard to get on the honor roll, that’s not really them — it was their teacher that did that, and the government that paid for it. And if somebody came here across the border legally and brought their family seeking a better life, their success is not due to them — no, no, they didn’t build it; the government gets credit for that. And if a person in their job says, ‘You know what, I’m going to work hard an get more skills, and I got a promotion’ — that promotion, oh by the way, that’s not yours, that’s thanks to government. That’s where this leads.”

It was the vehemence with which Romney delivered these lines that was surprising — a forcefulness usually absent from his bland recitation of a stump speech calculated first and foremost to offend as few people as possible. By (arguably) dissing free enterprise, Obama, it seems, struck at the core of Romney’s being, arousing at long last the passion beneath his buttoned-up exterior.