CANNON FALLS, Minn. — For most of the summer, President Obama has been under siege in the White House. On Monday, he became a road warrior, embarking on a three-day bus tour of Midwestern states that gave him campaign-style opportunities to hit back at Republicans in a crucial re-election district.
Riding in a black bus with dark tinted windows and flashing red and blue lights reminiscent of a “Mad Max” movie, the president urged audiences in Minnesota and Iowa to tell their elected officials that they will not tolerate any more partisan gridlock. appear in the recent debt ceiling talks.
“You have to send a message to Washington that it's time to stop the games,” he told a crowd of 500 under a canopy of elms and black walnuts here.
“It's time to put country first,” he said, recycling a line used by his Republican opponent in the 2008 presidential race, Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
The tour didn't quite match the genteel charm of bus trips by would-be presidents, including Mr. Obama himself. But in his appearance here, and later in a more freewheeling one at a seed exchange in Iowa, he hit on issues intended to appeal to moderate and independent voters while drawing sharp contrasts with Republicans.
“I'm here to recruit you to a fight,” said Mr. Obama, shirtless and tie-less. He called on the crowd to demand leaders who choose “the next generation over the next election.”
When Congress reconvenes next month, he said, he hoped it would move quickly to lift the nation's fragile economy.
The three-state swing, which included impromptu stops at a school and a coffee shop where Mr. Obama loaded up on apple pie and pumpkin pie, is an effort to regain the initiative after a dismal summer in which the president was stymied in debt talks. and then backfired by downgrading the country's credit rating.
In his first stop in Iowa, Mr. Obama said he would have work ready for Congress when he returned from vacation.
“I will put forward when they come back in September a very specific plan to stimulate the economy, create jobs and control our deficit,” he said. “And my attitude is to finish it.”
The Midwest trip also puts Mr. Obama in the spotlight in places where the Republican presidential campaign is heating up and at a time when the president's approval ratings are at an all-time low. Republicans held a straw poll Saturday in Ames, Iowa, which was won by Rep. Michelle Bachmann of Minnesota, and on Monday Gov. Rick Perry of Texas fell in Iowa.
The president took a few shots at the Republican field, noting incredulously that none of the candidates, when asked in a debate, said they would support a deficit-reduction plan that included one dollar of tax increases for every $10 of spending cuts. “This is not just common sense,” he said.
Mr. Obama also obliquely criticized Mitt Romney, noting that Republicans had supported health care plans that contained individual mandates — as Mr. Romney did when he was governor of Massachusetts, and as Mr. Obama's health care plan does — for to renounce them later. what he described as a case of “amnesia”.
The president's itinerary provides a backdrop for his tough message, taking him past family farms and through fly-by-night towns like Peosta, Iowa, (population 1,377) and Alpha, Ill. (pop. 671) .
Standing in front of a red barn bathed in a rosy afternoon sun in Decorah, Iowa, Mr. Obama had a lively back-and-forth with a supportive, but often defiant, crowd. One young woman asked if his supporters could be sure he wouldn't break their trust by making deals with Republicans on taxes and entitlements, given what she said was his negotiating tactic on the debt ceiling that “cut this trust”.
Mr. Obama responded that the economic collateral damage from a national default would simply be too great for him not to find a compromise with Republicans.
Another woman asked him how he planned to get his economic agenda through Congress in September, given the lack of Republican cooperation. Mr Obama said he understood the public's frustration with Washington because, he said, “the other side is being unreasonable”.
Other people were more sympathetic. In Cannon Falls, David Hauge, 77, a farmer, said, “People need to remember how close we were to absolute chaos” when Mr. Obama took office. Mr. Hauge said he was baffled by many Republicans' commitment to no new taxes, adding: “I can't imagine what it's like to negotiate with them.”
For a trip designed as a budget tour, the choice of stops was odd. Cannon Falls and the other towns Mr. Obama visited are doing better than most of the country, with lower unemployment rates.
White House officials said the idea was to take the president to bucolic places not easily accessible by Air Force One. Last week, they noted, he visited Michigan, a state that epitomizes the misery of industrial America.
Certainly, this riverside town was buzzing with excitement when Mr. Obama's motorcade rolled by. Crowds lined the streets and gathered in front of the Old Market Deli, where he dined with five military veterans. Smaller groups gathered in lawn chairs in Decorah.
At the Coffee Mill in Zumbrota, Minn., Mr. Obama approached the pie case with a finger pressed to his lips. His order included a coconut cream pie, which he handed to an assistant. He stopped again at an elementary school and posed for pictures with children in brightly colored shirts.
While the White House billed it all as a presidential visit, the line between it and a campaign is a fine one: Loudspeakers blared standard Obama campaign anthems from U2 and Brooks & Dunn. Mr. Obama also spent a lot of time promoting his administration's commitment to rural America, talking about plans to develop alternative fuels, erect windmills and extend broadband networks to remote farms.
However, these visions took a backseat to the economy. The president urged patience, saying the United States has had a string of bad luck but that the labor market will recover in time.
He offered mostly familiar solutions, such as extending the payroll tax cut and getting congressional approval of free trade agreements. Officials played down hopes for major announcements on that trip.
“I know you're disappointed,” Mr. Obama said, “and I'm disappointed, too.”
