LOS ANGELES (AP) - Mitt Romney's presidential campaign strove to turn the page on a week of public stumbles and Republican hand-wringing Sunday, promising a redoubled effort in the most competitive states to undercut his opponent's economic record as voters tune in for the final six weeks of a close race.
President Barack Obama, taking a rare break from the campaigning ahead of an address to world leaders on Tuesday, dispatched top allies to try to keep Romney's missteps alive in the minds of a dwindling cadre of undecided voters.
Both candidates were looking ahead to the pivotal next phase of the campaign, where the three presidential debates - the first on Oct. 3 in Denver - present the greatest opportunities to speak directly to voters or to get tripped up by a gaffe-turned-sound bite with little time to recover before Election Day.
Rehearsal for those debates consumed the early part of the day for the former Massachusetts governor, who huddled with senior advisers ahead of an evening campaign stop at a Denver-area high school.
While both sides are downplaying expectations, Romney's campaign sees the debates - the first one in particular - as a huge opportunity to get his campaign and its message back on track after a troublesome week.
A secretly recorded video released Monday showed Romney writing off his prospects for winning over the almost half of Americans who he said pay no taxes, are dependent upon government and see themselves as victims dominated the week.
"That certainly was a political analysis at a fundraiser, but it's not a governing philosophy," Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., a prominent Romney supporter, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "He absolutely has a vision for 100 percent of America. And that is really different from this president."
But even many conservatives were publicly sweating over the remarks, which seemed to play into Democrats' caricature of Romney as an out-of-touch plutocrat. Also dogging Romney were reports of internal finger-pointing and questions about his foreign policy judgment.
The Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, conceded that it wasn't the best week for Romney's campaign, but said in retrospect it would be viewed as the moment when the race crystallized around a central theme. "'We were able to frame up the debate last week in the sense of what future do we want and do you want out there for your kids and grandkids?" Priebus said.
The candidate himself had a similar takeaway.
"This is a tough time. These are our brothers and sisters. These are not statistics. These are people," Romney said, addressing donors in California. "The president's policies - these big-government, big-tax monolithic policies - are not working."
Hoping to discharge another long-problematic issue during an already lost week, Romney on Friday released his 2011 tax returns showing income of $13.7 million, largely from investments.
In his own personal slap at his opponent, Romney released a television ad citing a new book by Washington Post editor Bob Woodward that claims that during a 2009 conference call on stimulus negotiations, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., put a verbose Obama on mute. "If he cannot lead his own party, how can he lead America?" the ad says.