WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama on Tuesday showed his double approach with opposition Republicans, offering to work with them on pursuing nuclear energy while pushing his economic stimulus plan against Republican criticism.

With his Democrats facing big losses in the November congressional elections, Obama has recalibrated his strategy to advance his agenda ahead of possible big gains for Republicans. His plan includes reaching out to Republicans on tax breaks, on health care and on energy, but also putting them on the spot for any refusal to help.

On Tuesday, Obama touted nuclear energy expansion as the latest way both parties can move beyond the "broken politics" of Washington that have imperiled his agenda and soured voters.

Meanwhile, Obama showed the other side of his strategy to outmaneuver Republican opposition: he dispatched Vice President Joe Biden and Cabinet secretaries nationwide to tout the economic stimulus plan and counter Republican criticism. It's part of the Obama administration's plan to aggressively sell its own case to the public until bipartisanship comes, if it ever does.

With a host of new goals - rebuilding public confidence, keeping Obama in charge of the debate, halting deep Democratic losses in this year's elections - the White House is now infusing its communications strategy with more of the discipline that it famously used in Obama's presidential campaign.

The White House's new approach is at once more aggressive and more streamlined.

It includes more direct, rapid response to criticism; more events at which the president speaks directly to the public without the filter of the media; and more carefully choreographed interactions with the press. The intended narrative is one in which Obama hears people's frustrations and is working directly to end them.

The president cast his push for more nuclear energy as both economically vital and politically attractive to the opposition party. He announced more than $8 billion in loan guarantees to build the first nuclear power plant in nearly three decades, part of a nuclear initiative that could draw essential backing from Republicans.

At the same time, he asked Republicans to get behind a comprehensive energy bill that expands clean energy sources, assigns a cost to the polluting emissions of fossil fuels so that nuclear fuel becomes more affordable, and gives both parties a rare chance to claim common ground.