Two high-profile Republicans argued Wednesday that Mitt Romney's background in business might not directly apply to his work as a potential president.

The Republican presidential nominee often touts his time in the private sector as one of his top qualifications to be president. But conservative columnist Bill Kristol and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (a primary foe of Romney's) said that might not be enough to sustain Romney in the White House.

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Speaking at a Brookings Institution panel discussion, both men expressed doubt that treating government like a business – an idea on which Romney and other candidates have campaigned – might not be as effective as Romney thinks.

“I think his attitude will be efficiency – I’m going to come in and look at government like a business, which isn’t always the right answer because government isn’t a business,” Huntsman said.

Kristol added that Romney’s presidential resume is “thin,” given that he only governed for one term as Massachusetts and that his business experience “isn’t comparable.”

He also said that, as campaigns focus more on rhetoric than substance, they’ve grown.

The Weekly Standard editor said there is a wider chasm between politicking and policy compared to previous presidential election cycles.

“If you have a conversation with Stuart Stevens, who’s running the Romney campaign, and then have a conversation with Mike Leavitt who’s running the Romney transition, it’s just two different worlds. Obama’s a little more complicated and I don’t have that many private conversations with his top people, but I honestly think it would not be that dissimilar,” Kristol said.

Regardless of who wins next month, Kristol said either Obama or Romney will have a short but important window to act on their legislative priorities -- including tax reform -- given the need for Congress to come together over a deal to head off the looming “fiscal cliff,” a combination of spending cuts and tax increases scheduled for the end of the year.

“I think 2013 becomes a big entitlement reform, tax reform, budget reform moment,” Kristol said, suggesting whoever wins would quickly apply his post-election political capital (of which Kristol insisted there would be some, regardless of how close the vote is) to work on a “huge legislative agenda.”

TAMPA, Fla. – The task before Mitt Romney as he accepts his party’s presidential nomination this week in Florida is to convince the narrow segment of remaining undecided voters to boot President Obama from office, and then, decide on Romney as a suitable alternative.

This week’s Republican National Convention is one of three major opportunities – the other two being his selection of a running mate, and the presidential debates – Romney can count on to reach a large national audience. And for the former Massachusetts governor, that means changing perceptions about his personality and politics after a withering summer of attacks from the president’s re-election team and supportive super PACs.

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

Delegates look at an image of U.S. Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts Mitt Romney displayed during the opening session of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, August 27, 2012.

Slideshow: Republican National Convention

“I think if the election were held tomorrow, Obama would win the election,” said Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser in 2008 to that year’s GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. “And in the balance of days left in this election, Romney has to change the dynamic of the election.”

Republicans will help Romney execute his game plan in a series of speeches and events throughout the week. Organizers hope to project the convention’s overall theme, “A Better Future,” in speeches and events spread across the convention’s abbreviated, three-day schedule. Republicans will weave the theme of Monday’s canceled session (“We Can Do Better”) into the three remaining days’ themes -- "We Built It," "We Can Change It," and "We Believe in America."

Those themes represent the tasks at hand. Republicans must convince voters that Obama hasn’t done well enough to merit re-election. But Romney will arrive in Tampa with some of the worst personal approval ratings of any presumptive Republican nominee; 44 percent of voters said in the August NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that they held a negative opinion of Romney, while 38 percent expressed a positive opinion.

For Romney, the convention is as much an exercise in re-introducing himself to voters and softening impressions as it is making the case against Obama.

"He needs to introduce himself to people. Even though he’s the nominee, he lost the summer pretty decisively," said Bob Shrum, the veteran Democratic presidential strategist.

Shrum said the Obama campaign, over the course of the summer, had efficiently "shattered the central rationale for Romney’s campaign, that he’s a businessman who knows how to create jobs."

To do that, Romney will lean on surrogates like former Olympic athletes, who will pay tribute to Romney’s successes as head of the 2002 Salt Lake City games. Other speakers will include members of Romney’s church, fellow Mormons who are expected to pay tribute to acts of charity undertaken by Romney, a former bishop in his faith.

Another closely watched-speech with potential to move the needle will be the Wednesday night speech by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan – whose selection represented Romney’s first major decision in the general election. The Republican running mate is expected to fete Romney, as well as make the case for entitlement reforms.

Modern conventions in both parties are carefully scripted to drive a message to a nationally televised audience, leaving for a narrow margin of error for speakers. The primetime lineup has been carefully selected, but the risk that a single speaker could veer off-message hangs over Tampa almost as much as the impending tropical storm.

“You’re supposed to vet the speeches, and you’ve selected the speakers,” said Republican operative Frank Donatelli, the head of GOPAC.

An impolitic remark could hijack news coverage away from the central messages of each night. The GOP is also hoping to avoid what happened in 1992, when several hard-charging speeches by conservatives were blamed for turning off swing voters from President George H.W. Bush’s re-election bid.

But most pivotal of all is Romney’s own acceptance speech, which will be nationally-televised address Thursday night.

Romney has said he’s begun drafting the speech, and appeared to join his wife, Ann, on Sunday in practicing their convention appearances. The Romneys headed to Brewster Academy, a prep school near their home in New Hampshire, for several hours on Sunday afternoon to practice their speeches.

But he’s overall been generally guarded about the contents of his and Ann’s speeches.

"I like my speech. I really like Ann's speech," he told reporters after a second day of practice on Monday morning.

The national spotlight for Romney will offer a personalizing opportunity for the former Massachusetts governor. But he’ll also have to explain his rationale for running, and make the case against a second term for Obama.

“He needs to bring definition to the race,” said Schmidt. “Why's he running for president? I think it's an unanswered question right now. “

A successful convention might mean a bounce for Romney; McCain led Obama in the immediate aftermath of both of their respective conventions in 2008. Republicans argue that advantage only diminished due to the financial crisis in the fall of that year.

This year, a different obstacle hangs over Romney’s bid to leave Tampa with more energy than Obama: next week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C.

WOLFEBORO, N.H. -- Mitt Romney called a rare press conference this morning to respond to June's tepid jobs report, calling the unchanged unemployment rate "unacceptably high," and repeatedly referring to the numbers as a "kick in the gut."

In the hastily-called press conference, Romney's first in more than a month, the presumptive GOP nominee conceded that some factors in the slow pace of jobs growth may be out of President Obama's control, but said also that the president had failed at taking advantage of opportunities to improve the labor market that he could influence. 

"In any jobs figures, there are going to be factors that come and go that you can't control, but the things you can control you want to get right," Romney told reporters gathered in a hardware store here. "In the case of President Obama, this is not a monthly statistic or even a yearly statistic. We've looked at now almost four years of policies that have not gotten America working again."

Romney also responded broadly to critics who say his own economic proposals have not been specific enough by referring the questioner back to his 59-point economic plan, released last fall, and by deflecting the question back towards the president, whom Romney claimed had not offered sufficient new proposals to spur growth himself.

"I don't say much to critics," Romney said. "I have put out 59 steps for how I would get the economy going, and I don't think I have seen any from the president that show what he's planning on doing. I laid out my 59 steps. Take a look at them, I think you'll find them very specific."

Romney continued. Referring to the president's campaign bus tour through the Rust Belt, which began yesterday, he said, "How do you go across Pennsyvlania and Ohio and not talk about being serious about creating jobs through manufacturing policies that make America more attractive for investment and growth?"

Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt responded in a statement.

“The President brought us back from the brink of another Depression but he doesn’t believe our work is done -- he’s got a plan to restore the middle class and create a million jobs now that Mitt Romney opposes and Republican leaders have blocked," LaBolt's statement read in part. "Mitt Romney says he has a better path, but over the past decade we saw where that took us -- to the slowest job growth since World War II, the collapse of our financial system and the deterioration of the middle class."

Romney has spent the past week here in Wolfeboro vacationing with his family, and has been spotted riding a jet ski and boating around the lake with a bevy of grandchildren in tow. Today, with his eldest son Tagg waiting in the wings, he also responded to charges that by criticizing the president's frequent golf outings and occasional vacations he was acting hypocritically to vacation now. Romney deftly turned the answer back toward the economy.

"You know, I'm delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family," he said. "I think all Americas appreciate the memories they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope more Americans are able to take vacations, and if I'm president of the United States I'm going to work very hard to make sure we have good jobs for all Americans who want good jobs and as part of a good job the capacity to take a vacation now and then with their loved ones."