Former House speaker Newt Gingrich has opened his bid for the US presidency by criticising President Barack Obama's handling of the US economy.
Mr Gingrich, who was speaker of the US House of Representatives in the 1990s, borrowed a signature phrase from Mr Obama - "Win the future" - to lay out why Republicans should pick him as their presidential nominee.
"This is not about one person in the Oval Office. This is about millions of Americans believing we can win the future with the right policies leading to the right outcomes," he told Fox News last night.
Mr Gingrich, who has long flirted with a run for the Republican presidential nomination, joined a slowly forming field of challengers to the Democratic president. He preached a conservative message of low taxes, a balanced budget, less government and more domestic production of oil.
"We have to make the argument that President Obama has the wrong policies and they lead to the wrong outcomes. It's pretty straightforward - 9 per cent unemployment is the wrong outcome," he said, adding Mr Obama's "worldview is very far to the left."
Mr Gingrich announced his candidacy via a YouTube video posted on his Twitter account, inviting potential supporters "to join us in getting America back on the right track" and condeming Democrats.
"We Americans are going to have to talk together, work together, find solutions together and insist on imposing those solutions on those forces that don't want to change," he said. "There are some people who don't mind if America becomes a wreck as long as they dominate the wreckage. But you and I know better," he said.
Mr Gingrich (67) is a conservative famed for budget battles with former president Bill Clinton after he led the "Republican revolution" in 1994 elections that brought his party to power in Congress.
Credit for the 1990s economic boom is generally given to Mr Clinton, a Democrat, but Mr Gingrich, who was House speaker from 1995 to 1999, claimed some of the credit for himself.
"As speaker of the House, I worked to reform welfare, to balance the budget, to control spending, to cut taxes, to create economic growth. Unemployment came down from 5.6 per cent to under 4. And for four years, we balanced the budget and paid off $405 billion in debt. We've done it before. We can do it again," he said.
A Reuters-Ipsos poll released yesterday said Mr Gingrich trailed Mr Obama by 18 percentage points, 53 per cent to 35 per cent.
Reuters