US elections: Eight out of 10 American voters praise Obama over superstorm crisis BARACK Obama returned to the campaign trail yesterday after a three-day break to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, declaring "our work is not yet done" and reviving his successful 2008 campaign slogan: change. The president, who won the White House four years ago thanks in part to his themes of "hope" and "change," had largely avoided them until now. But as Republican rival Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, sought to portray himself as the new candidate of change, Mr Obama aimed to reclaim that mantle in a neck-and-neck race with just days to go before election day. "I know what change looks like because I've fought for it," Mr Obama told a crowd of 2,600 on an airport tarmac in Wisconsin, one of a handful of battleground states that will determine the winner of the 6 November election. "Governor Romney has been using all his talents as a salesman to dress up these very same policies that failed our country so badly - the very same policies we've been cleaning up after for the past four years - and he is offering them up as change," Mr Obama said. Well, let me tell you Wisconsin, we know what change looks like. And what the governor is offering sure ain't change. Eight out 10 respondents in a Washington Post poll yesterday said that Mr Obama had done an "excellent" or "good" job in responding to the superstorm. His Republican rival, Mr Romney, made several campaign appearances in Florida on Wednesday and was back on the hustings in Virginia yesterday to attack Mr Obama for his first-term record on the economy, trying to secure some significant late ground in the tied race while the president was occupied elsewhere. Having not mentioned Mr Obama by name in two days and scaling back the negative rhetoric of his speeches, Mr Romney returned to the attack to criticise the president's plan to create an agency of business to help promote jobs growth. "I don't think adding a new chair to his cabinet will help add millions of jobs on Main Street," Mr Romney told supporters in Roanoke, Virginia, a state the Republicans consider a must-win. We don't need a secretary of business to understand business. We need a president who understands business, and I do. And that's why I'll help be able to get this economy going again. While victims of the storm, and the recovery from it, remained uppermost in Mr Obama's mind, his campaign spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said it was time for the president to rejoin the race for votes. "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," she said. The first order of business was to denounce aggressive new television advertisements released by the Romney campaign in Ohio, another vital swing state, including one that claims two American automobile giants, General Motors and Chrysler, were shipping jobs to plants in China at the expense of local workers. The car giants are building plants to serve the Asian market. In a campaign briefing, Mr Obama's advisers said the Romney commercial was: "One of the most misleading, hypocritical, and indefensible ads we've ever seen in a presidential race." In Wisconsin, Mr Obama conceded that he had not been able to make progress on all the changes he promised in 2008, but he noted - as he repeatedly does - that he ended the war in Iraq, repealed a policy that prevented gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military, and ordered the US mission that killed Osama bin Laden. Keeping a slightly more positive tone, Mr Obama drew distinctions with Mr Romney without being as aggressive as he has been in recent weeks. He did not mention the word "Romnesia" - the term he has used to delight crowds when describing what he says are Mr Romney's tendencies to shift positions. But he kept up strong criticism of his opponent. Mr Obama portrayed his Republican challenger as someone who would not bring bipartisanship to Washington - a promise Mr Obama also made four years ago and has had trouble keeping. Mr Obama, who has focused his campaign primarily on appealing to middle-class Americans, also used a section of his speech to praise the record of former president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who has become the top surrogate for Mr Obama in the final days of the campaign. The president took time away from the campaign trail to oversee the response effort. He opened his remarks with a nod to the suffering experienced by those affected by the storm, and aides said he would be briefed about the recovery process. After Wisconsin, Mr Obama had stops scheduled in Nevada and Colorado before spending the night in Ohio.