The latest Bloomberg Businessweek devotes six pages to an article that contends Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney used the wrong strategy to defeat President Obama. By arguing that Romney should have focused more attention on his own credentials, the obvious implication of Joshua Green’s article is that Romney is more qualified for the job than the incumbent.

The moment calls for a leader who understands the economy, management, and the art of empirical decision-making. In that regard, Romney’s résumé looks tailor-made. His career in strategic consulting and private equity began in the 1970s during a recession that defied the best efforts of politicians and business leaders. It traced the revolution in American corporations that followed in the ’80s and ’90s, a revolution Romney and his peers helped drive, and one that made the U.S. as a nation more competitive. It offers clear lessons about how government can respond to such upheavals and how Romney might use his experience to turn things around.

Yet instead of putting that career at the center of his campaign, Romney has taken pains to avoid it. After an early attempt to portray himself as a “job creator” who put 100,000 people to work, he mostly dropped the subject of his time at Bain Capital. Ceding that story allowed his opponents to frame the race around the most unflattering details of his career—layoffs, plant closings—stripped of their broader context, and to portray Romney as a vulture capitalist. If he loses, that will be why. Even if he wins, his candidacy will have reinforced some of the worst stereotypes the American public has about its business elite.

This could turn out to be one of the great missed opportunities in politics. And it’s one that perplexes many of his supporters. Over the last 18 months, as I’ve covered the presidential race, the same question kept coming up, especially from businesspeople: How did a man they regard as embodying their profession’s finest qualities come to represent the worst? Romney’s achievements should have been a source of strength, an advantage over a president who has disappointed hopes for a faster turnaround. Rather than just attacking Obama, Romney could have met the national anxiety about the economy by explaining how he had helped companies adapt and how he could help the country do the same.