Sober Obama to say America faces fateful choice

President Barack Obama will warn America Thursday it faces the clearest election choice in a generation, and dispense the hard truth that solving the country's ills will take years. Obama will formally accept the Democratic nomination for president by calling on his compatriots to unite behind him in a middle class crusade to create jobs in manufacturing, energy and education and to slash the deficit. "When you pick up that ballot to vote -- you will face the clearest choice of any time in a generation," Obama planned to say at the Democratic National Convention in North Carolina, according to excerpts of his remarks. "On every issue, the choice you face won't be just between two candidates or two parties," Obama said in the excerpts, comparing his own vision with that or Republican nominee Mitt Romney. "It will be a choice between two different paths for America." Obama will step to the podium shortly after 0200 GMT to ask Americans to reward him for a second term, despite widespread economic anguish and polls that show a majority of Americans think their country is on the wrong track. "I won't pretend the path I'm offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn't elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth," Obama said. "And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. "It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one." The prime-time address comes with Obama waging a too-close-to-call race with Romney, who argues that 8.3 percent unemployment and sluggish growth prove the president is out of ideas and should be sent back to Chicago after one term. But hours before Obama took the stage, he got a timely boost as Wall Street stocks hit their highest levels since 2007 amid a flurry of revived hopes for jobs growth and moves in Europe to quell the continent's financial crisis. Obama was also expected to tell Americans that he rescued them from a second Great Depression, blame Republicans for leaving him a legacy of debt and recession, and warn Romney's policies would risk repeating the disaster. He is under pressure to lay out specifics of what he would hope to do in a second term, and to go into more detail than the largely aspirational vision he has so far framed. In the excerpts, the Obama campaign said the president would call for the creation of a million new manufacturing jobs by the end of 2016 and a cut in net oil imports by a half by 2020 plus the creation of 600,000 new positions in the natural gas industry. He pledged to work to halve the cost of college within a decade and repeated his pledge by more than $4 trillion during the same period. Those policy highlights appeared to hint at a renewed push for some ideas already blocked by Republicans in Congress rather than a wholesale reorientation of Obama policy. Romney, meanwhile, called on Obama to issue a report card to Americans on "forgotten promises and forgotten people." "Over the last four years, the president has said that he was going to create jobs for the American people and that hasn't happened. "He said he would cut the deficit in half and that hasn't happened. He said that incomes would rise and instead incomes have gone down. "This is a time not for him not to start restating new promises, but to report on the promises he made. I think he wants a promises reset. We want a report on the promises he made." Democrats devoted a portion of Thursday's program to lionizing Obama's record on national security, an area in which polls show he is favored over Romney. Obama's decision to order a special forces raid deep into Pakistan last year to kill Osama bin Laden will doubtless play a starring role, along with his honored 2008 campaign vow to end the Iraq war. Former Democratic nominee John Kerry and Vice President Joe Biden will lead tributes to Obama as commander-in-chief, hoping to capitalize on Romney's failure to mention the Afghan war in his own convention address last week. Anticipation was building around the sports arena hosting Obama's address. "We're going to hear the best speech of his life tonight," said campaign volunteer Brenda Stone. Lavonia Perryman, vice president of the Michigan black caucus, said Obama shouldn't try to repeat the kind of exuberance he whipped up four years ago. "That is almost like saying we are going to have the first Easter again. Jesus Christ only came one time. We celebrate it, but we don't have him coming back, that ain't gonna happen."