This week’s polling — both nationally and in key states like Florida and Virginia — indicates that President Obama is vulnerable in the November election. But does his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, have what it takes to win the presidency? We might be getting the answer in the aftermath of Obama’s recent comments about business owners. Romney loses ground every time he runs away from free-market capitalism. He wins when he embraces and defends it.

Obama helped him this week with his declaration that “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that,” a statement that has generated a great deal of controversy. Obama’s defenders charge that it was taken out of context — that his apparent disparagement of business owners was a simple misunderstanding of what the ambiguous “that” refers to. But in full context, Obama unmistakably spent several sentences arguing that small-business owners owe far more of their success to government and its institutions than they are willing to admit, and should therefore be willing — grateful, even — to pay the higher taxes he would impose on them.