Sure, he was going to reverse the oceans’ rise. He was going to be the one. He was going to help put all that partisan bickering aside. The 2008 election was all about Barack Obama.

But as the president campaigns for re-election, Bloomberg Businessweek suggests that the message will have very little to do with the incumbent’s accomplishments.

How tough is Obama’s road ahead? At this point in the election calendar, he’s doing worse than both Carter and Bush. Despite runaway inflation and gas lines, the U.S. produced nearly 170,000 jobs per month in the summer of 1979, almost five times the pace during the comparable period this year. Likewise, one year before President George H.W. Bush sought a second term, the unemployment rate was 7 percent. Today it is 9.1 percent. “The President is incredibly vulnerable because of the economy,” says Matthew Dowd, a Republican strategist and a Bloomberg News consultant.

Indeed, popular support is draining from the White House. In the Bloomberg poll, 64 percent of respondents said they will either definitely vote for someone other than Obama or consider doing so. More than half say his $447 billion jobs plan would do nothing to lower the jobless rate.

Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, says incumbents can defy hard times and win a new mandate only by transforming the election into something other than the customary vote on their performance. “It’s important to make it at least a choice between the incumbent and the challenger, if not a referendum on the challenger,” he said.

So the President may appeal to Florida retirees by casting his Republican rival as extreme on Social Security. Or he may try to round up Latino votes in Arizona by assailing Republican proposals to crack down on illegal immigrants. And he’ll continually underscore the long-term, structural dimensions of the economy’s ailments. “People understand that the seeds for this were sown long before the President became President,” says Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado. “They’re not going to be deciding this election based on bumper stickers or slogans.”