A top aide to President Obama says voters should put the nation's economic challenges in "perspective.""The hole that was created was huge," said Obama political adviser David Axelrod on Fox News Sunday.
Obama inherited the worst recession since the Great Depression, Axelrod said, but now the economy has created jobs for 29 straight months; the auto industry and manufacturing sector are coming back.
While Republican Mitt Romney makes the economy his top issue against the president, the incumbent and aides stress numbers that have improved since the depths of the 2008 financial crisis.
"It took years to get us into this mess," Axelrod said on Fox. "It's going to take years to get out of it."
Romney and aides, meanwhile, point to statistics showing that this is one of the slowest economic recoveries in history, including an unemployment rate that remains at 8.3%. They blame Obama's economic policies.
In an interview aired today on CNN's State of the Union, Romney said: "I can absolutely make the case that now is the time for something dramatic and it is not the time to grow government.
"It's the time to create the incentives and the opportunities for entrepreneurs and businesses big and small to hire more people and that's going to happen," Romney added.
The voters' perspective on the economy -- whether it is coming back from the depths, or whether it is running too slowly -- could well decide this fall's presidential race.
