"I will lead America to a better place, where confidence in the future is assured, not questioned," the GOP challenger told an ebullient crowd at the Wisconsin state fairgrounds here. "This is not a time for America to settle. We're four days away from a fresh start, four days away from the first day of a new beginning."
From the start, the two campaigns have had different theories of the race — Romney's being that it would be a referendum on Obama; Obama's that it would be a comparative choice between the two candidates. But in the final days, both sides appear to have realized that this election is both. The challenger seeking to unseat an incumbent must make a case for himself. The incumbent seeking to hold on to his office must convince voters not only that the alternative would be worse but also that he has earned the right to another term.
So Obama found himself heading into Election Day in the traditional posture for an incumbent under siege — the fighter, not the conciliator, wiser for the experience.
"I'm a very nice guy, people will tell you. I really am," Obama said.
But if "the price of peace in Washington" means cutting deals to slash student financial aid or give health insurance companies more power, "I'm not going to make that deal," the president said at a high school gym in Springfield, Ohio, at the second of three rallies Friday in that crucial state.
He added: "I am a long ways away from giving up on this fight. I got a lot of fight left in me. I don't get tired. I don't grow weary. I hope you aren't tired either, Ohio."
Though the polls show the race to be close, it is not because the voters lack a contrast, and both candidates are using their last hours of frenzied campaigning to highlight that choice.
Romney ended the day in West Chester, a suburb of Cincinnati, where he came together with his wife, Ann; their five sons; his running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.); and more than 40 top surrogates for a huge rally before they fanned separately across battleground states for the three-day sprint to Election Day. Of them all, Ohio looms largest. "Your state is the one I'm counting on, by the way. This is the one we have to win," Romney told the energetic crowd of more than 18,000, the biggest of his campaign.
From there, Romney set off on a swing from New Hampshire to Iowa to Colorado and, on Sunday, to Pennsylvania. Romney is making an eleventh-hour gamble to contest the Keystone State, which leans Democratic but, with 20 electoral votes, could give him an alternate path to victory. Meanwhile, he is dispatching Ryan to Minnesota, another leaning-Democratic state that Romney is trying to snatch away from Obama.
Obama is setting off on a whirlwind tour of his own, with plans to stump on Saturday in Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin and on Sunday in a slew of other states. At various stops, he will be joined by former president Bill Clinton and singers Katy Perry, Dave Matthews and John Mellencamp.
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