CLEVELAND – President Barack Obama cast his re-election race against Republican Mitt Romney as the economic choice of a lifetime Thursday, seeking to stir undecided voters and asking the nation to buy into his vision for four more years or face a return to the recession-era “mistakes of the past.”

Said Romney: “Talk is cheap.”

From opposite ends of Ohio, a state vital to both of their political futures, Romney and Obama dueled in economic speeches that set the tone for a fierce, final five months of debate. At the core, the pitches were the political foes’ familiar, fundamentally different takes on how get to an economically aching nation soaring again.