Obama strategist David Axelrod rallies supporters in New Hampshire as the president’s reelection campaign gets rolling.

Anyone who was of voting age in 2008 can remember the throngs of boisterous supporters who came out to cheer then Senator Barack Obama every time he made a campaign stop in New Hampshire. The concert-style euphoria of those events inspired millions of enthusiastic voters, many of them out of work and without health insurance, to believe there was hope for America and change was imminent.

Three years later, the economy is still in shambles, and Obama’s approval ratings have dropped below 50 percent in the Granite State. Republican candidates are building muster for their own presidential bids, attacking Obama for his failure to pull the nation out of the economic pit they dug during the Bush administration.

Nevertheless, Obama’s top strategist said the message behind the president’s reelection campaign will be the same as the first time around.

“People say to me, ‘You ran on hope and change before. What are you running on now?’ Hope and change. Hope and change,” said David Axelrod. “The fact is, change is hard and it takes time, but the point is to keep going.”

Axelrod, a former senior advisor to Obama and top strategist for his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, was at Jumpin’ Jay’s Fish Cafe in Portsmouth on the evening of Sept. 27 to speak with supporters as they gear up for 2012.

Axelrod was traveling around the state to build momentum for what could be a difficult battle next November. A poll conducted by the UNH Survey Center in late June found just 46 percent of New Hampshire adults approve of Obama’s job performance, while 49 percent disapprove. Only 40 percent approve of how Obama is handling the economy, while 56 percent disapprove.

In Portsmouth, Axelrod acknowledged the ongoing economic challenges the nation faces. Those challenges, he said, were far more significant than the Obama administration had anticipated when he was elected.

“The one thing we could not have predicted was just how difficult a situation we would face in the economy,” Axelrod said. “We did not know how deep and how ferocious the recession that we had already entered would be.”

In subsequent weeks, the president and his team crafted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and took other steps, such as bailing out the auto industry, that were “as unpopular as they were necessary,” Axelrod said. He defended the president’s actions, saying they prevented a second Great Depression.

“In the last quarter of 2008, the last quarter of the Bush administration, the economy lost 8.9 percent on an annual basis. It was a phenomenal drop,” he said. “A year later, in the fourth quarter of the first year of the Obama administration, the economy grew by over 4 percent. That was maybe the sharpest turnaround ever.”

But Republicans widely criticized the Recovery Act and, by refusing to compromise on virtually any issue, have used the economic crisis to their political advantage, Axelrod said. He cited a New York Times interview with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who said Republican leaders had decided from the beginning not to cooperate with Obama on any major piece of legislation.

“They made a political judgment in the midst of all this, and they forced us to act on a partisan basis on almost everything that we did, and then they ran against us for being too partisan,” Axelrod said.

That tactic seemed to pay off in November 2010, when voters swept in “the most partisan, ideological group of Republicans we’ve seen in our lifetime,” Axelrod said. He accused those Republicans of promoting drastic cuts in education and a return to the very policies that led to the economic meltdown.

“They have a vision, and that vision is that if we just cut everything—if we cut the budget, if we cut taxes, if we cut all regulation, if we cut Wall Street loose to make its own rules again—that the economy will flourish and everybody will benefit,” he said. “We’ve tried that. We have a recent experience in this and it didn’t turn out well. This is exactly what got us into the crisis in the first place.”

Axelrod criticized Republicans for catering to the demands of Tea Party extremists, which nearly resulted in a government default on services during the prolonged debt ceiling debate in August. Voters have grown weary of such partisan jockeying, he said, and Republicans have failed to offer any new ideas on the economy.

Regarding Obama’s chances next year, Axelrod has been encouraged by what he views as a lackluster field of Republican candidates. He singled out former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the current frontrunner in New Hampshire.

“I watch Governor Romney twist himself in pretzels every single day, and each day it’s a new incarnation,” he said. “You know the contortions he went through to turn himself from a moderate into a social conservative. He’s a guy who presents himself as an oracle on the economy whose state was 47th in job creation when he was governor.”

Goaded by the crowd to comment on Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Axelrod responded, “That’s like shooting fish in a barrel.” But he obliged, saying Texas is toward the bottom of the nation in wages, number of uninsured people, and school dropout rate.

But it’s not only conservative Republicans who are dissatisfied with Obama. The president has faced disillusionment within his own party, as well. Many liberal-leaning voters who supported Obama in 2008 have been disappointed to see him cave on issues like tax cuts for the rich and tighter air quality regulations.

Axelrod admitted the obstacles but said Obama has a plan for the future. He pointed to the American Jobs Act, the president’s recently unveiled $447 billion spending package aimed at boosting the economy and restoring the middle class. There’s no sense blaming Republicans for the nation’s problems, he said.

“People aren’t looking for us to explain why things aren’t better, they’re looking for us to explain how they’re going to get better, and we also have to explain how they could get a hell of a lot worse if we go back to (former) policies,” he said.

Obama is kicking his reelection campaign into high gear in New Hampshire. Jeremy Bird, the national field director of Obama for America, will be the guest speaker at the Portsmouth Democrats’ 2011 banquet on Friday, Oct. 14, at Sheraton Harborside Hotel. Three days later, on Monday, Oct. 17, former Vermont governor and 2004 presidential contender Howard Dean will speak at a reception to benefit the Committee to Elect House Democrats at Truslow Photo Studio in Portsmouth.

At Jumpin’ Jay’s, Axelrod rattled off a lengthy list of Obama’s accomplishments, such as bringing troops home from Iraq, advancing stem cell research, raising fuel efficiency standards, investing in clean energy technology, improving women’s rights in the workplace, tightening credit card laws, reforming the student loan system, and—his crowning achievement—enacting comprehensive health care reform.

Axelrod encouraged supporters to be confident and said he looks forward to facing the Republican nominee in 2012.

“Bring ’em on, man,” he said. “I am ready for this fight.”