An inspired President Barack Obama kicked off his final campaign sprint yesterday by sounding a note of post-hurricane unity, saying Americans “rise or fall as one nation” during a crisis.
But while the man seeking re-election to the world’s top job said he was humbled by nature’s wrath and the enduring American spirit, it was clearly game on in his race against Republican Mitt Romney, whom he blasted as a slick “salesman” peddling economic snake oil to US voters.
Obama struck an optimistic, uplifting tone at the top of his remarks in chilly Green Bay, Wisconsin, where he paid tribute to the millions hit by devastating superstorm Sandy, mourned those who died and pledged to help rebuild.
“When disaster strikes, we’ve seen America at its best,” Obama, clad in a brown bomber jacket and with his Air Force One jet as a dramatic backdrop, told the crowd.
“All the petty differences that consume us all seem to melt away. There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm; they’re just fellow Americans,” he added.
Obama has been in the white-hot spotlight this week over his handling of the federal response to the storm, and he has received strong praise from, among others, Romney surrogate Chris Christie, the blunt-talking Republican governor of storm-devastated New Jersey.
“Leaders of different parties working to fix what’s broken,” is how Obama, mindful of his message of bipartisan cooperation just five days before Americans head to the polls, described the past 72 hours in ravaged communities up and down the eastern seaboard.
“A spirit that says, ‘in the end we’re all in this together’. So we rise or fall as one nation. As one people,” the President added.
Obama quickly lasered in on his battle with Romney, hammering his challenger for seeking to pluck the “change” mantle from the President.
“Now, in the closing weeks of this campaign, Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly, the very same policies we’ve been cleaning up after for the past four years – and he is offering them up as change,” Obama said.
“What the governor is offering sure ain’t change. Getting more power back to the biggest banks isn’t change. Leaving millions without health insurance isn’t change.”
Romney has branded the president as a man with no plan for the next four years, saying America cannot endure a second term of a sluggish Obama economy.
Obama rolled out a list of accomplishments, including ending the war in Iraq, winding down the war in Afghanistan, decimating al Qaeda and killing Osama bin Laden, and instituting health care reform.