Would the president have been moved to comfort a stranger and bring her to tears if his job approval numbers weren’t below 40 percent? Would he dispense hugs if America had any sort of confidence left in government? Would he be in Minnesota at all if Republicans who want his job had not gathered over the weekend in Iowa to condemn him? Tim Pawlenty, now out of contention, comparing the president’s leadership to a “manure spreader in a windstorm.
Hard to know, but there was the president, sans jacket, driving through Minnesota in a black, unmarked, specially fortified bus, talking for an hour during an outdoor town-hall session, then driving to the Old Market Deli to eat a turkey sandwich with the locals. The White House reporters traveling with the president chronicled his every public move.
Outside the Cannon Falls deli, Obama stopped to speak with a small crowd of White House-selected Minnesota residents, including a middle-aged woman who told the president that her son had recently returned from Afghanistan. “Is he okay?” Obama asked her after giving her a warm hug. Her son was fine, the woman assured the president, losing her composure briefly when he gave her a second hug. “We are so grateful,” the commander-in-chief assured her.
This is the president the Obama campaign wants America to see: the leader who sent a mother’s son to war and shares her relief that the soldier came home; the simple man humble enough to buy a taster’s choice of locally baked pies, to be enjoyed on a summer’s drive down the highway; and the president who has two young daughters and spied rambunctious school kids waving handmade signs at a local school, and then ordered his bus to brake for handshakes and photos.
The point of Obama’s bus trip is to play up his dedication to job creation and economic renewal in rural America during five town-hall sessions over three days in tiny towns in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. On Tuesday, for instance, the president will host an all-day economic forum in Peosta, Iowa, with invited experts and local business figures to “listen and learn,” and talk up his administration’s efforts to improve rural life for the 16 percent of the U.S. population that live beyond cities.
His issue: Last week's debate in which every GOP candidate opposed the idea of raising any taxes whatsoever on the nation's wealthiest people in order to reduce the federal debt.
"What that tells me is, okay, you've gotten to the point where you're just thinking about politics, you're not thinking about common sense," Obama said last night in Peosta, Iowa.
"You've got to be willing to compromise in order to move the country forward," he added.
At stops in Iowa and Minnesota, Obama noted that his GOP opponents were asked if they would accept a deal of $1 in new tax revenues for $10 in spending cuts -- and they all said no.
"Ten-to-one ratio, and nobody was willing to take that deal," Obama said in Cannon Falls, Minn. "And what that tells me is, okay, you've gotten to the point where you're just thinking about politics, you're not thinking about common sense."
We think it's the most extended comments Obama has made on the field of Republicans who want to replace him in the White House.
The president cited the GOP in promoting his plan for "balanced" debt reduction, not just budget cuts but more tax revenues for Americans making more than $200,000 a year.
In Minnesota, Obama noted that predecessors Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton raised taxes as part of overall efforts to reduce debt. "All of them understood that you have to take a balanced approach to solving our deficit and debt problems, the same way a family would," Obama said.
Republicans say it's a bad idea to raise taxes in a bad economy.
GOP party chairman Reince Priebus, who described the bus trip as "Obama's Debt End Tour," said Obama is "using tax payer dollars to spin his failure to put America back to work."
"This is Barack Obama's economy and the only way to turn it around is to make Barack Obama a one term president," Priebus said.
Tags: Rick Perry' Bill Clinton ,presidential candidate ,Obama visits midwest
No comments:
Post a Comment