Obama adviser: Romney running a campaign of distortion

(CBS News) President Obama's deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter pushed back against the presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, charging him with running a campaign filled with negativity and devoid of vision.

"Instead of laying out a vision of where he wants to take this economy," Cutter said of Romney on "Face the Nation" Sunday, "he had a speech full of distortions and dishonesty.

"Mitt Romney went to a plant that closed under George Bush, and he tried to blame Barack Obama," Cutter said of Romney's speech in Ohio last week. "That's the type of campaign that he's running."

Romney spoke on Thursday at the National Gypsum plant in Lorain, Ohio, which closed in 2008. "This factory is empty," Romney said. "It is owned by National Gypsum. It was closed in 2008 at the beginning of the economic downturn. Had the president's economic plans worked, President Obama's plans worked, it would have been open by now . . . But it is still empty."

[By shutting the drywall factory National Gypsum eliminated 58 jobs that year. By 2009 the company had closed three more plants, in Florida, N.J. and N.C., due to the declining market for drywall.]

"I'm not sure what exactly the next seven months are going to do, particularly when you're spending your campaign really running a wholly negative campaign," Cutter told host Bob Schieffer.

Earlier on "Face the Nation," Romney aide Eric Fehrnstrom said that the president has to run on his record of failed economic policies.

Cutter responded to Fehrnstrom's remark by saying, "Let's talk about that record. [Since] the end of the recession, we've created 4.1 million jobs. Manufacturing is the highest it's been in two decades. We're on track to double our exports. We're sending more kids to college, reducing their debt coming out. That's the record of this president."

Cutter said it's not only Romney's campaign talking points that are lacking, but also his record.

She said that during his time as Massachusetts' governor, "based on his private sector business experience and making enormous promises about what he was going to do for the economy - similar promises that he's making right now - [Romney] led the state to 47th out of 50th in job creation."

Cutter said that the the states below Massachusetts in job creation "were largely states that were hit by Katrina."