Building off an argument that has been made quite a bit over the last two weeks, the Romney campaign has an ad out today talking about the scandalously poor performance of the Obama administration’s Department of Energy loans and the money Obama has wasted on dubious projects undertaken by connected Democrat donors.

It’s a good ad, and an excellent riposte to the president’s campaign and their attack on Romney’s background in private equity – can we say that attack has failed at this point? Is that fair?

Because as Marc Thiessen pointed out at the Washington Post last week, Obama’s record with public equity is a scandal…

Amazingly, Obama has declared that all the projects received funding “based solely on their merits.” But as Hoover Institution scholar Peter Schweizer reported in his book, “Throw Them All Out,” fully 71 percent of the Obama Energy Department’s grants and loans went to “individuals who were bundlers, members of Obama’s National Finance Committee, or large donors to the Democratic Party.” Collectively, these Obama cronies raised $457,834 for his campaign, and they were in turn approved for grants or loans of nearly $11.35 billion. Obama said this week it’s not the president’s job “to make a lot of money for investors.” Well, he sure seems to have made a lot of (taxpayer) money for investors in his political machine.

All that cronyism and corruption is catching up with the administration. According to Politico, “The Energy Department’s inspector general has launched more than 100 criminal investigations” related to the department’s green-energy programs.

Now the man who made Solyndra a household name says Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital “is what this campaign is going to be about.” Good luck with that, Mr. President. If Obama wants to attack Romney’s alleged private equity failures as chief executive of Bain, he’d better be ready to defend his own massive public equity failures as chief executive of the United States.

At Hot Air, Ed Morrissey builds on a moronic statement by Joe Biden that being in venture capital or private equity doesn’t qualify Romney to be president to expand on the weakness the president’s private equity argument brings with it…

Biden could have had a point if his boss hadn’t decided to become President PrivatePublic Equity, although even then Romney had a term as governor of Massachusetts and his rescue of the Salt Lake City Olympics, which makes him still more qualified for the presidency than Obama, even discounting his long record of success as an executive in the private sector.  Since this administration insists on making equity bets with our money, maybe it’s time to get someone who knows what he’s doing in position to make those choices — or better yet, find someone who isn’t interested in picking losers with house money in the first place.  Either would be an improvement over what we have now.

Maybe Obama can take his running mate’s advice and take up amateur plumbing in his retirement.

Call this one more example of the president opening himself up to counterattacks by taking an ill-advised swing at Romney when he’s guilty of similar failure while in office.

It’s not working.