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President Obama takes questions from the audience Wednesday after speaking about the economy and the middle class to the City Club of Cleveland. Jacquelyn Martin/AP hide caption

President Obama takes questions from the audience Wednesday after speaking about the economy and the middle class to the City Club of Cleveland.

Barack Obama let down his graying presidential hair a little bit on Wednesday. He also joked about coloring it.

Speaking to the City Club of Cleveland, Obama seemed to be in a reflective mood. During the question-and-answer period, he was asked by a seventh-grader what advice he would give to himself now, if he could go back to his first day in office.

"Maybe I should have told myself to start dying my hair now," Obama said. "Before people noticed, because by a year in, it was too late."

Obama also suggested he should have moved more quickly to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, before political resistance mounted. And he should have done more to explain the depth and duration of the oncoming recession.

"I think I might have done a better job in preparing people so they kind of knew what was coming," Obama said. "That would have helped explain why we needed to pass the Recovery Act, or why we needed to invest in the auto industry."

Many of those decisions remain controversial six years later, even as the economic recovery is well underway.

"At every step that we've taken over the past six years we were told our goals were misguided; they were too ambitious; that my administration's policies would crush jobs and explode deficits, and destroy the economy forever," Obama said. "Remember that?"

He argues that strong job growth, falling energy prices and shrinking federal deficits should have quieted his critics. But they haven't.

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Obama Says Critics Making 'The Same Argument' Despite Better Economy