Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is getting kicked around for his private equity credentials even by fellow Republicans. Romney's argument against Pres Obama hinges on the former Massachusetts governor's record in the private sector, which is why he insists that he helped create 100,000 jobs at his old firm, Bain Capital. For the most part, private equity firms such as Bain are neither job-creating machines nor bloodsucking villains. They're agents of what the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter called "creative destruction." That's the economic theory that says destruction is the yin to creation's yang; you can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. The real issue is less about the details of Bain's record, which varies from deal to deal, than whether a skilled practitioner of creative destruction is the right person to sit in the Oval Office in January 2013.