What I would have liked to have heard him say was, "[T]he question now I think for the American people [is] how are we going to move forward in a way that assures that if you want to work, and are able to work, there are good, well-paying jobs out there that will allow you to take responsibility for yourself and your family, so that you can get ahead. And if you've worked all your life and want to retire, you don't have to do it in poverty.  That you don't have to choose between paying the rent or the mortgage and buying food or prescriptions.  That if your child wants to go to college, that you don't have to say no because you can't afford it.  Or if you've fallen on hard times, that there's a strong support structure for you and your family that helps you get back on your feet.  And what this campaign is really going to be about is a choice between two fundamentally different visions not just about how you do that, but about the role government plays in creating the conditions that encourage it, and being there for people when that doesn't happen.  It's about what kind of people and what kind of country we want to be."

That would be a different vision than what Romney is offering; saying that "if you work hard and take responsibility" is just a more eloquent way of saying what Romney's been saying.

There are plenty of people out there working really hard, and among them are those who have cobbled part-time jobs together to have something resembling full-time work, people who have had to add a part time job on top of the full-time one in order to try to keep up, often at minimum wage and without benefits, people laboring at physically demanding jobs long after their bodies have started to give out, because there's nothing else out there for them.  

"Working hard" is not the magic key that frees everyone from poverty or allows people to be self-sufficient, and I'm tired of hearing that as if it's the answer to everything.

I feel the same about many issues.

I think that Obama is different from Romney on many issues mostly in the way he expresses himself. As Anne says, it is more elegant.
But in substance...

Since the SCOTUS is a major issue here, it will be also interesting if these two are asked about the qualities they would look for in a Justice. That should be fun. Let the parsing begin.

He transformed the rich into the richer and the poor into the poorer.

He transformed Union shops into non-union shops.

Let me count the transformations this corporate shill laid upon us.

What Obama must be referring to is Reagan's ability to make himself appear likable at same time he was shafting us.
He knew how to put one over.