Obama 'incomplete' grade sparks Republican assault

NORFOLK, Virginia

Republicans bent on disrupting Barack Obama's run-in to his big convention speech pounced Tuesday after the president gave himself only a grade of "incomplete" on fixing the economy.

The US leader was in politically contested territory in Virginia to hold his final rally before heading to the Democratic National Convention, which his wife Michelle was to headline with an opening night speech later in the day.

Republicans are trying to narrow the election into a referendum on Obama's economic management, and capitalized on several days of clumsy messaging by the president and his team, inserting themselves into convention news coverage.

Obama was asked to grade his performance on the economy during an interview with a Colorado news station broadcast Monday and unwittingly provided an opening for his Republican foe Mitt Romney and his team.

"You know, I would say 'incomplete,'" Obama said, before laying out steps he had taken to save the auto industry, make college more affordable and to invest in clean energy and research, which he said were important for the long term.

"We are still going through one of the toughest times that we've had in my lifetime and because of the financial crisis we lost nine million jobs," Obama told KKTV.

Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan quickly took Obama to task over the remark, which illustrated how any offhand comment can suddenly be fodder for daily campaign combat in a close election.

"Four years into a presidency and it's incomplete?" Ryan told CBS News Tuesday.

"The president is asking people just to be patient with him. Look ... the kind of recession we had, we should be bouncing out of it, creating jobs.

Romney supporter John Sununu, meanwhile, mocked Obama and said he had chosen the wrong description of his presidency.

"He thought the 'I' was for incomplete. The 'I' was for incompetent," Sununu said.

Obama did not refer specifically to the row on Tuesday but promised to pack his convention speech with plans for the future, which he said Romney had conspicuously failed to do at his convention in Florida last week.

"On Thursday night, I will offer what I believe is a better path forward -- a path that will create good jobs and strengthen our middle class and grow our economy," he told a crowd of more than 11,000 people.

Obama also acted as warm-up man for his wife.

"I'm going to be at home and I'm going to be watching it with our girls, and I am going to try not to let them see their Daddy cry. Because when Michelle starts talking, I start getting all misty."

The Republican assault came on the heels of another stumble by the Obama team at the weekend, when a top campaign officials struggled to answer the question: "Are Americans better off now than they were four years ago?"

Ryan was again the antagonist when he compared Obama on Monday to former Democratic president Jimmy Carter, who was felled by Ronald Reagan in 1980, partly owing to an anaemic economy.

"The president can say a lot of things, and he will, but he can't tell you that you're better off," Ryan said, mounting a raid into North Carolina on the eve of the Democratic nominating convention in Charlotte.

The Obama campaign sent out Joe Biden to answer the charge, in characteristically bombastic fashion.

"Folks, let me make something clear, say it to the press -- America is better off today than they left us," Biden said, referring to the situation left behind by the previous Republican administration.

"Let me just sum it up this way folks ... Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive."

The question of "are you better off after four years" is a perennial feature of US presidential campaigns, and poses a puzzle for the Obama campaign.

If Obama aides answer that Americans are better off, they could be seen as indifferent to economic struggles of middle class voters.

But if they say America is not better off, they immediately undermine Obama's rationale for seeking a second term in office in November's election amid 8.3 percent unemployment and weak economic growth rates.

A new opinion survey of likely voters by The Hill newspaper released Tuesday reflected the delicacy of the president's position.

Fifty-two percent said that America was in a worse condition than in September 2008, when the financial crisis struck while 54 percent said that Obama did not deserve a second term based on his job performance.