President Barack Obama will ask voters for patience in dealing with the economy and argue that this election will be the “clearest choice of any time in a generation” as he makes his case for a second term in his acceptance speech tonight at the Democratic National Convention.

Obama will point to the difficulty of the task of fixing the economy, according to excerpts released ahead of his prime-time speech.

“I won’t pretend the path I’m offering is quick or easy. I never have. You didn’t elect me to tell you what you wanted to hear. You elected me to tell you the truth. And the truth is, it will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades.”

He will call for “the kind of bold, experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one” while at the same time “remember that not every problem can be remedied with another government program or dictate from Washington.”

But Obama will say that America’s problems can be solved.

“The path we offer may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And I’m asking you to choose that future. I’m asking you to rally around a set of goals for your country — goals in manufacturing, energy, education, national security and the deficit; a real, achievable plan that will lead to new jobs, more opportunity, and rebuild this economy on a stronger foundation. That’s what we can do in the next four years, and that’s why I’m running for a second term as president of the United States.”

Obama will outline new goals for a second term, although the excerpts are vague about how he will achieve them. Some are retreads, such as his proposal to cut the deficit by $4 trillion over the next decade and invest savings from ending the wars elsewhere. Obama will also outline a goal of cutting oil imports in half and adding 600,000 natural gas jobs by 2020, adding 1 million manufacturing jobs in the next four years and slowing tuition increases at colleges.