President Obama stumped in Virginia this past Thursday on his campaign’s latest theme: “economic patriotism.” It is unclear exactly what that means, which is exactly the point. The more this President can confuse and distract the people, the better are his chances of winning reelection. This is how a President with an awful record campaigns for a second term.

“It’s time for a new economic patriotism, an economic patriotism rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong and thriving middle class,” Obama said. He asserted that his policies will “make the middle class secure again.” In case you have forgotten, he asserted the same thing four years ago. It has not worked out so well.

Campaigning against John McCain, Obama said he would restore middle-class economic growth lost during the Bush years.

The opposite happened. Obama said he would reverse the $2,000 decline in median income for working-age households during the first seven years of the Bush administration. In fact, during Obama’s presidency, incomes for those families fell by $4,300 — more than twice as fast as they fell during the Bush years. More than half of that decline — $2,900 worth — came after the recession ended, Bloomberg News reported in April.

Obama hasn’t a clue how to restore economic growth for the middle class. His opponent, however, does.

Mitt Romney spent his career creating jobs. He knows how big and small companies work; how executives and investors react to various government actions, and what policies are most likely to spur bosses to hire more people.

His plan to restore economic growth is based on knowledge of how the economy really works, not left-wing economic theory.

Romney’s plan is not, as Obama would have you believe, to raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes on the rich. The authors of the think tank study on which that claim is based have said the claim is not true. Romney proposes reforming our overly complex and burdensome tax code and cutting federal spending so that individuals (including investors who start businesses and bosses who hire people) will have more money to spend.

Romney also has a record. Obama claims that Massachusetts “fell” to 47th in job creation under Romney. Not so. As Factcheck.org has noted, when Romney took office, Massachusetts was ranked dead last in job creation. By the end of his term, the state was up to 28th. That’s a huge gain.

You can go with President Obama and get four more years of empty rhetoric, or you can go with Mitt Romney and get the country moving again. It really is not a difficult choice.