President Barack Obama reframes economic message as he and Mitt Romney stump in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney delivered dueling economic messages back-to-back Thursday in opposite corners of all-important battleground Ohio.

For Obama, a nearly hourlong speech at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland was an attempt to hit the reset button on his re-election campaign and present himself as the man best positioned to steer the economy out of a skid.

At an event in Cincinnati, Romney argued that Obama has had plenty of time to do so but has failed.

Neither candidate offered a proposal starkly different from what he already has said publicly. That wasn't the point. Rather, Obama and Romney are seeking to define each other as their general election fight enters its summer phase. And that's how they found themselves for the first time stumping in the same state on the same day -- nearly in the same half-hour.

Romney began his remarks about 1:30 p.m; Obama started a few minutes past 2.

In Obama's case, the Tri-C stop stands to be remembered months from now as the president's first explicit attack on Romney. Despite speaking in front of a friendly gymnasium crowd of about 1,500 people in a Democratic stronghold, Obama seemed to tailor his remarks not to supporters but to independents who vote with their pocketbooks.

"This has to be our North Star -- an economy that's built not from the top down, but from a growing middle class ... that provides ladders of opportunities for folks who aren't yet in the middle class," Obama said.

Obama talked of a "stalemate" in Washington, D.C., where partisan gridlock and "two fundamentally different views of which direction America should take" have prevented his agenda from advancing. "At stake," he said, "is not simply a choice between two candidates or two political parties, but between two paths for our country."

In an anticipated move, Obama blamed slow economic recovery on the lingering effects of his Republican predecessor's policies. Under President George W. Bush, Obama said, the United States experienced the slowest job growth in a half-century and slid into a crippling recession that typically takes 10 years to undo. He balanced his acknowledgement that the economy has yet to fully rebound with an assertion that it has improved since he took office in 2009.

And Obama equated a vote for the former Massachusetts governor with a vote to return Bush-era policies.

"Gov. Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that we tried during the last decade -- the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down," Obama said. "So they maintain that if we eliminate regulations, if we cut taxes by trillions of dollars, if we strip down government to national security and a few other basic functions, then the power of businesses to create jobs and prosperity will be unleashed. ... This is their economic plan."

Though Romney was 250 miles away, his campaign kept a visible presence near the Tri-C campus. A Romney campaign bus arrived about 9 a.m. and circled the block several times, honking the horn. Volunteers made phone calls and watched the speech on television on the bus. As the bus made another lap after the speech, two elderly women wearing angry scowls and Obama T-shirts briefly stood in the bus' path for about 10 seconds before moving off the road.

"That was an empty speech from a desperate president who is out of new ideas and out of time to keep his promises," Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said via email. "President Obama discussed more of the same liberal economic policies that have already failed to create jobs. ... Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney understands that the private sector is not "doing fine" and he will promote new pro-growth policies that will turn around our struggling economy."

One partisan in a unique position to weigh in was Ohio's junior senator, Rob Portman. The Cincinnati-area Republican served more than a year as Bush's budget director and is considered in the top tier of Romney's potential running mates.

On a conference call Thursday morning with reporters, Portman said he did not disagree that Obama "inherited a tough economy" from Bush. But the president, he said, failed to adequately fix it when he took office in 2009, focusing too heavily on creating or keeping government jobs and too little on addressing the needs of the private sector.

"You know, if we were just at the percent of people working who were working when President Obama was sworn in, that so-called labor participation rate, we would be at 11 percent unemployment right now," Portman said during the call. "And I think that's closer to where we are, even when you take out so many people who are under-employed."

Protesters -- at least 15 were spotted before Obama's speech -- stood peacefully on a corner at East 30th Street and Community College Avenue, across from the recreation center where Obama spoke. Some held Romney campaign signs; others were from a local Tea Party organization and described themselves as unaffiliated with either candidate.

Inside the rec center, supporters filled bleachers and floor seats. Chants of "Four more years!" and "Fired Up, Ready to Go!" -- the latter Obama's rallying cry from 2008 -- broke out intermittently before the president arrived.

Afterward, Irma McQueen, a retired teacher from Twinsburg, said she loved what Obama had to say about education and the middle class. And Adam Bolinger of Euclid showed off the autograph he snagged from Obama -- on the famous photograph of Obama in the situation room the day of the successful raid on terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

Turned out Obama wasn't done with surprises. After leaving Tri-C, his motorcade made an unscheduled stop at the Boys & Girls Club of Cleveland, on Broadway Avenue. A few of the young girls inside shrieked when the president, in shirtsleeves, walked through a gym entrance unannounced. Obama talked basketball with several young men.

"Is your name really LeBron?" he wondered after one of the kids introduced himself that way.

After taking a group photo in front of a playground set outside, Obama left to catch a flight for New York, where he had official business and campaign events planned for Thursday evening.

This story was written and reported with Plain Dealer reporter Doug Brown and Washington Bureau Chief Stephen Koff.

jimmy fallon nick collins marco rubio marco rubio wwdc dave matthews ambien