Obama knows he needs to get the official number down further and that will be the goal over the next 240 days. As you said, it's blatant manipulation and one of the risks of the GOP pushing only on economics. They won't have the benefit Clinton did in 1991 where people where angry and didn't believe the recovery had started even though it had.
He's happy to push gas prices now and see them back down in time for the election as well. His hope is to run again a "do nothing Congress." To do that he needs to create the illusion of favorable trends so he can then say his opponents are slowing down the recovery which is so strong, so assured they can only try to hold it back for political gain.
It's a sham but it's his best argument and the Democrats, along with complicit media, are masters of message manipulation. They know perception is reality and don't care about the facts, just the story they can sell.
Finally Obama knows he's got the race card to pull out to make this an affirmative action reelection rather than by the standard of, for example, a President John Kerry.
Objectively he doesn't deserve a second term but unlike other incumbents in his position, he has enough left in his bag of tricks to win.
Back down to what price? Gas was $1.79 a gallon for regular when Obama took office. And the reality is that Obama has no real control of gas prices, especially if things heat up in the ME. His only weapon is to release oil from the SPR, but that is only marginally effective and short term.
The problem there is that this $4 gas right now is going to hurt 2012 Q1 & Q2 (and quite possibly push unemployment back up a tick or two), which will reveal itself right about debate time...