Obama Bus Rolls Onto Michele Bachmann's Turf

President Obama’s focus during a three-day bus trip in the Midwest will be exclusively on the economy, the White House said Monday.

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters traveling aboard Air Force One that Obama will be repeating much of his anti-Congress message from last week, when he ripped lawmakers over the debt-ceiling talks.

Carney also insisted Obama’s trip to Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois has nothing to do with GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), the winner of the Ames Straw Poll in neighboring Iowa, or any other GOP candidate for president.

"I mean, this is about a part of the country where we’re able to hit three states with interesting economies and places that we can visit," Carney said in response to a question about Bachmann. "So it’s certainly unrelated to that.

He said it was ridiculous to suggest that “any time the president leaves Washington, it’s campaigning,” according to a White House pool report. He also said the trip has nothing to do with worries that Obama is struggling to maintain support in Iowa, Minnesota or Illinois, all of which the president carried in the 2008 contest.

Bachmann, an arch-conservative who has been one of Obama's most vocal critics, is from Stillwater, Minn., which is about 50 miles north of Cannon Falls.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the visit was unrelated to Bachmann's recent rise to top of the GOP presidential contender heap - and insisted it wasn't a campaign trip.

Obama is "doing what presidents do, going out into the country," said Carney.

The President's travel itinerary also incudes stops in other tiny towns like Decorah, Iowa, where he will visit the Seed Savers Exchange, which preserves and trades rare garden seeds.

Obama will also take part in an economic forum in Peosta, Iowa, and take part in two more town hall meetings in Alpha and Atkinson, Ill.

The President is expected to renew his call for extending the payroll tax cut for workers, creating a funding bank for infrastructure projects, and approving three free-trade agreements.

And Obama is likely to resume ripping his Republican and Tea Party opponents in Congress for putting politics ahead of patriotism. "There is nothing wrong with our country," Obama said last week. "The only thing keeping us back is our politics."

When Obama first ran for President in 2008, Obama won four of the five rural Republican districts he plans to visit.

Now, the commander in chief faces the daunting task of convincing furious voters that he can turn the struggling economy around at a time when his approval rating has plummeted to 39% - the lowest of his presidency.

"The country is in an unbelievably angry mood," said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg. "You are dealing with a turn away from Washington, from politicians in general."

The silver lining for Obama is that the public - according to recent polls - appears to blame the GOP and Tea Party even more for the poisonous politics in Washington that resulted in the first-ever downgrade of America's once sterling AAA credit rating.

Also, a Marist poll done while the Stock Market was sliding south found that six in 10 voters believe Obama is not responsible for the current dismal economic conditions - and that he "inherited" this mess.