Will voters tolerate an "incomplete" from Obama?

(CBS News) CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- President Obama on Thursday is set to accept his party's presidential nomination, even though he gives himself a grade of "incomplete" when it comes to the nation's top priority: fixing the economy. When talking about the economy, the president has repeatedly noted that the financial crisis erupted just months before he took office. Yet after four years in office, the president can't rely on conjuring memories of the Bush administration to sell his candidacy.

When he addresses tens of thousands of his supporters at the Democratic National Convention here Thursday night, Mr. Obama will have to strike the right balance between reminding voters of the economic catastrophe he inherited and taking ownership of the current, sluggish recovery. Asking for four more years to finish the job is hardly a new re-election message for an incumbent president, but it's one that may be hard to sell with 23 million Americans out of work or looking for more work.

Shontez Jones, resident of Belleville, Ill., visiting the site of the convention with a Democratic delegate, told CBS News that "it's hard to get things done in four years."

"The last president had eight years to tank [the economy]," he said. "Eight years to reverse that seems fair."

At the same time, Jones said the president had more leeway to blame the Bush administration at the start of his presidency. Now, Jones said, the president should avoid appearing as if he wants to "deflect responsibility.'

The Obama campaign acknowledges that George W. Bush isn't on the ballot. That said, Democrats are threatening this week that a Romney presidency would effectively look like a third term for Mr. Bush.

"It's not about Bush. It's not about a person," a senior campaign official told CBS News. "It's about a set of decisions that were made that led to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and we don't want to go back there. It's about Mitt Romney whose policies created that crisis in the first place... Do we continue to move forward, or do we go back to those same policies where Mitt Romney wants to take us?"

Mr. Obama's speech, senior campaign officials told CBS News, will point to the "tough decisions" he made that have paid off, like bailing out the auto industry, and describe the path forward if Mr. Obama is re-elected.

Presidential incumbents running for re-election have typically taken the same tack of reflecting on their accomplishments while striking an ambitious note for the future.

"We are on the right track to the 21st century," President Bill Clinton said at the Democratic convention in 1996. "We are on the right track, but our work is not finished."

Former President George H.W. Bush at the 1992 Republican convention focused largely on his foreign policy success, "This convention is the first at which an American president can say the Cold War is over, and freedom finished first."

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However, like Mr. Obama now, Mr. Bush had to acknowledge voters' economic concerns. Aside from a mention of the Persian Gulf war, some of his remarks in that 1992 speech sound as if they could easily fit into Mr. Obama's speech this Thursday.

"Do I want to do more? You bet," Mr. Bush said. "Nothing hurts me more than to meet with soldiers home from the Persian Gulf who can't find a job or workers who have a job but worry that the next day will bring a pink slip," Mr. Bush said. "In this election, you'll hear two versions of how to do this."

Not unlike the president today, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Clinton chastised their opposition in Congress.

"Now, okay, why are these proposals not in effect today?" Mr. Bush said of his agenda. "Only one reason: the gridlock Democratic Congress."

"The president is lucky because he's only the second most unpopular," Luntz said Tuesday on "CBS This Morning." "Congress is disliked even more than Barack Obama is."

Among solidly Democratic voters, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell may have done more than the Obama campaign ever could have to inspire sympathy for the president when he said, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

McConnell said that in an interview two years ago, but the Democratic delegates gathered here remember it well.

"Everyone is recalling that after the president's inauguration speech, the Republicans got together and made a pact to make him only a one-term president," Democratic delegate Jackie Lewis of Arlington, Tex., told CBS News. "We can see the evidence of that. They have put 23 million people out of work to put one man out of office... And if you've ever been in management, you know you can't motivate people who don't want to be motivated."

Lewis said that Mr. Obama deserves credit for his "perseverance" in the face of Republican obstructionism. Using a motivational phrase that seemed particularly suited for Mr. Obama's challenge, Lewis said, "He's eating the elephant one bite at a time. And in his second term we'll see more of the fruits of his labor."