Barack Obama wastes no time after Sandy hiatus - brings in ‘change’ tagline as election looms

Buoyed up by national leadership opportunities and public approval as election looms

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Barack Obama has jumped back into campaign mode

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Read more news from IrishCentral on Hurricane Sandy

After three days managing the federal response to Hurricane Sandy, President Barack Obama has jumped back into campaign mode with renewed gusto.

With contradictory polls showing that the presidential race remains a tight race between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney, it's an opportunity for the president to draw distinctions between their aims and leadership styles.

According to the Boston Herald, Obama's advisers believe his break from campaigning had minimal impact on his national standing. If anything, they say, it gave Obama a chance to offer the type of comfort and command that only a president can deliver in a crisis.

Now however the campaign is seeking to make up for the lost time with a major travel itinerary including rallies in Wisconsin, Nevada and Colorado.

Obama’s remarks will reportedly focus on boosting middle-class security, the key message which the campaign is expected to push in the final days of the race.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki told the Herald that while the president remains focused on the storm recovery, 'There is a reality of a political election happening in five days and he will return to the trail to make the case to the American people on why they should send him back for four more years.'

Read more news from IrishCentral on Hurricane Sandy

Before traveling to Wisconsin, Obama held a storm briefing at the White House with Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Craig Fugate and other administration officials.

Whilst campaigning, the president has planned to hold conference calls while traveling with local elected officials from affected areas.

The storm halted the so-called Mittmentum for Romney, taking the public’s eyes off his campaign until a disastrous 'storm relief' event was revealed to be a campaign rally that had simply been retiled to show Romney's resolve to help out.

The president’s timely response to the storm prevented Romney from indulging in direct partisan sniping, although it was via his surrogates. A raft of new television and radio ads in the critical state of Ohio suggested that automakers General Motors and Chrysler are adding jobs in China at the expense of workers in the Midwestern swing state.

Vice President Joe Biden said the spots were among 'the most flagrantly dishonest ads I can ever remember.' A General Motors spokesman scoffed that Romney's TV ads seemed to hail from a parallel universe.'

Although Paul Ryan claimed in a statement that GM and Chrysler are expanding their production overseas, Chrysler is actually adding 1,100 jobs to its plant in Toledo.

Meanwhile the Obama campaign released a new TV ad citing former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s recent endorsement of Obama. It will run in 10 states, including Minnesota.

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