Presidential election: Obama says his path leads to a better place

The president closed out the Democratic National Convention by accepting his party’s nomination and asking people to vote for him one last time.

“America, I never said this journey would be easy, and I won’t promise that now,” he said.

“Yes, our path is harder, but it leads to a better place. Yes our road is longer, but we travel it together. We don’t turn back. We leave no one behind. We pull each other up. We draw strength from our victories, and we learn from our mistakes, but we keep our eyes fixed on that distant horizon, knowing that Providence is with us, and that we are surely blessed to be citizens of the greatest nation on Earth.”

Take a tax cut

Preparing for the last two months of the general election campaign against GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the president staked out no new ground on Thursday and made a speech that sounded at times like his state of the union addresses.

He moved briskly through domestic and international issues, from Social Security, Medicare, energy and tax cuts to killing Osama bin Laden and ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The president quipped that Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan were prescribing the same Republican remedies for the economy that had been discredited.

“Have a surplus?” the president said. “Take a tax cut. Deficit too high? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two cuts, roll back some regulations and call me in the morning.”

Romney said after the speech that Obama had “offered more promises, but he hasn’t kept the promises he made four years ago. Americans will hold President Obama accountable for his record. They know they’re not better off and that it’s time to change direction. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will restore America’s promise and deliver a better future for our country.”

Views of government

Four years after his campaign of hope and change captivated millions of Americans, Obama has found himself defending a term in which unemployment has been persistently high and annual budget deficits have topped $1 trillion each year.

Republican members of Congress have charged that the administration has been in hyper-regulation mode, burdening businesses with new costs and uncertainty.

Obama sought Thursday to draw distinctions between the two parties’ views of government.

“We don’t think government can solve all our problems,” he said. “But we don’t think that government is the source of all our problems any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles.”