president Barack Obama">Obama is on a three-state Midwestern tour determined to build public pressure on opponents to move his way on economic policies and sharpen his campaign message for his 2012 re-election bid against an emboldened Republican field who see him as increasingly vulnerable because of the faltering economy.
Obama">Obama was using the campaign-style bus tour through rural areas of Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois to make the case for his presidency with independent voters and rekindle enthusiasm among his Democratic base.
Obama">Obama's tour comes after the president spent much of the summer holed up in Washington enmeshed in bitter, partisan negotiations on the U.S. debt crisis that cratered his approval ratings and those of Congress amid high unemployment, a recent downgrade in the country's credit rating and Wall Street tumult.
In Iowa, Obama">Obama returned to a state that handed him a key victory over Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton in their nomination fight but where Republicans have now been blanketing the state in preparation for its first-in-the-nation caucuses next February, attacking the president at every turn. The bus tour comes on the heels of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann's weekend victory in an influential poll in Iowa, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's contest-rattling entrance into the race.
On Tuesday, the second day of a three-day bus tour, Obama">Obama was to spend the day promoting rural economic policies, among the series of remedies he is pushing to fire up anemic job growth. But the measures are targeted, such as making it easier for rural businesses to get access to capital, and far more modest than the ambitious 2009 stimulus package he pushed through Congress when unemployment was rising but still below the current 9.1 percent level.
The economic message illustrates Obama">Obama's current dilemma. Republicans control the House of Representatives and believe that addressing the nation's long-term debt will have a positive effect on the economy; they have no appetite for major spending initiatives aimed at spurring a recovery.
Embracing that demand for fiscal discipline, Obama">Obama has called for both spending cuts and increases in revenue, but he encountered resistance to that formula from congressional Republicans during the contentious debate this summer over raising the nation's debt ceiling.
With echoes of Harry Truman's 1948 campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress, Obama">Obama encouraged audiences at town hall meetings Monday in Minnesota and Iowa to rise up against congressional inaction.
"If your voices are heard, then sooner or later these guys have to start paying attention," he said. "And if they don't start paying attention then they're not going to be in office and we will have a new Congress in there that will start paying attention to what is going on all across America."
Though classified by the White House as an official presidential trip, the tour's first day had the distinct feel of a campaign excursion. The president's motorcade, at times numbering nearly 30 vehicles, rumbled over 160 miles (260 kilometers) through small towns and cornfields in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. It's most prominent feature was the president's bus, not the colorful transports of campaigns, but a dark, imposing vehicle recently purchased for $1.1 million by the Secret Service.
The settings of the two outdoor town halls were in picturesque locales, one with Minnesota's Cannon River as a backdrop and the other in Iowa amid hay bales against a red barn lit by a setting sun.
Obama">Obama took the opportunity too return to the grassroots campaigning that helped propel him to the White House, and he shed his jacket and tie to mix it up voters at stops at coffee shops and lunch spots while traveling between events.
Obama">Obama's rhetoric had a campaign pulse as well.
He attacked the Republican presidential field, recalling a moment in last week's candidates' debate when all eight of the candidates said they would refuse to support a deal with tax increases, even if tax revenues were outweighed 10-to-1 by spending cuts.
"That's just not common sense," Obama">Obama told the crowd in Cannon Falls, Minnesota. "You need to take a balanced approach," he insisted.
He criticized Republican front-runner, Mitt Romney, though not by name, for instituting a health care system while governor of Massachusetts that is similar to the Obama">Obama-backed federal law that Republicans now oppose.
"You've got a governor who's running for president right now who instituted the exact same thing in Massachusetts," the president said. "It's like they got amnesia."
He cast himself as a compromiser, a trait White House aides say resonates with independent voters and that lives up to his 2008 pledge to change the ways of Washington.
"I make no apologies for being reasonable," Obama">Obama declared.
But some Democrats maintain Obama">Obama has gone too far, caving in to Republican demands and having little to show for it.
His first questioner in Iowa, a woman who declared herself a strong supporter, wondered whether Obama">Obama had compromised on key principles by not fighting for the repeal of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy, or for agreeing to make some cuts to Social Security and Medicare during the debt ceiling showdown.
Obama">Obama said the risk of raising taxes on all Americans forced him to compromise and extend all the Bush-era tax cuts until the end of 2012 and that the consequences of a government default were too great to risk a failed deal on the debt ceiling.
But he promised to assemble a plan to boost the economy that he will present to Congress in September.
On Tuesday, the president was to preside over a White House Rural Economic Forum at Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta on Tuesday. There the president was expected to discuss new initiatives and proposals to help farm regions, some of which are already under way and do not require additional government spending.
The proposals include targeting Small Business Administration loans to rural small businesses, expanding job training to Agriculture Department field offices and recruiting more doctors for small rural hospitals.
Obama">Obama's tour comes as the slow-to-begin race for the Republican nomination has accelerated and undergone a dramatic shift, essentially becoming a three-way contest for the chance to challenge Obama">Obama next year. Romney, who has been riding high for months while other Republicans have been struggling to emerge from the pack, now finds himself facing two significant foes in Perry and Bachmann.
Romney declared on Monday his business background sets him apart in the presidential race and dismissed the buzz over emerging challengers as "the political winds of the day." Perry insisted no one could go "toe to toe" with him.
Romney, who lost the nomination in 2008, hasn't been able to unite warring factions of the Republican electorate since entering the race earlier this year. Social conservatives and the grassroots conservative tea party movement haven't warmed to his candidacy, and he has left some economic conservatives and Republicans in the party establishment underwhelmed.
Bachmann and Perry both have support among the small-government, low-tax tea party movement and Christian evangelicals, and both are competing hard in Iowa, where social conservatives dominate.
Romney provided a window into how he would address Perry's entry into the race.
"Understanding how the economy works by having worked in the real economy is finally essential in the White House. And I hope people recognize that," Romney said, stressing his years of private business experience and drawing a contrast with Perry, Texas' longest-serving governor who never has worked in the private sector as an adult.
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