President Obama reemerged on the campaign trail Thursday with a call for unity and bipartisanship in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, saying that Americans “rise and fall as one nation, one people.”
Obama’s appearance in Green Bay, Wis., followed a speech earlier in Virginia by Republican Mitt Romney, who attacked Obama’s handling of the economy for the first time since Sandy devastated New Jersey and New York.
The separate swing-state stops showed both candidates are returning to aggressive campaigns just five days before the election. They also opened a period in which Obama and Romney will crisscross the country at a breakneck pace to visit as many battlegrounds as possible.
Polls show the two deadlocked in a tight race, with a Fox News poll released Thursday finding them each with 46 percent support.
In Green Bay, Obama sought to remind the crowd who is president.
With the presidential plane taxied on the runway, Obama emerged in an Air Force One bomber jacket and spoke behind a podium adorned not with his campaign’s slogan “Forward!” but with the presidential seal.
A day after touring storm-ravaged New Jersey with Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a staunch Romney supporter, Obama opened his address by highlighting how Sandy left people of different political stripes working together.
“We rise and fall as one nation, one people ... all the petty differences that consume us in normal times all seem to melt away,” he said. “There are no Democrats or Republicans during a storm, just fellow Americans.”
For more on the candidate's return to the campaign trail, click here.
