No easy ride for Obama’s bus in Iowa

On HIS visit to the US Midwest this week, President Barack Obama was asked by an Iowa mother named Emily at the Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah what had gone wrong.

Standing in a setting that was Martha Stewart-perfect – red barn with an American flag, surrounded by white pines, red cedars and pink zinnias – the president looked breezy in khakis and white shirt. But he seemed to tense up as Emily spoke.

“So when you ran for office you built a tremendous amount of trust with the American people, that you seemed like someone who wouldn’t move the bar on us,” Emily said. “So I’m just curious, moving forward, what prevents you from taking a harder negotiating stance, being that it seems that the Republicans are taking a really hard stance?”

The president defended himself with a tinge of resignation: if the crazed bullies put a gun to your head, you must surrender.

“Now, I know that people would like to say, ‘Well, just do something to get these guys under control,”’ he told Emily, adding: “You don’t want to reward unreasonableness. Look, I get that. But sometimes you’ve got to make choices in order to do what’s best for the country at that particular moment.”

The answer must have seemed lame even to Obama because, on the spur of the moment, he felt backed into doing what many in his White House and party wish he had done long ago. He told Emily he would put forward “a very specific plan to boost the economy, to create jobs and to control our deficit.” (But not until September.)

Driving through Midwest cornfields in his opaque, black, custom-made, $1.1 million “Matrix” bus, our opaque president found himself in The Field of Dashed Dreams. Dubuque’s Telegraph Herald published a front-page editorial, suggesting the president could have skipped the campaign-style trip and “sent the savings to Dubuque County and north-west Illinois, which were inundated by flash floods less than three weeks ago” but didn’t get federal assistance.

Obama spent Tuesday in Peosta squirrelled away in rural economic forums. As Obama did dressage, governor Rick Perry – the Republican presidential hopeful – galloped through Iowa like an unbroken stallion in danger of cracking a leg.

The Texas governor called the president “the greatest threat to our country” and questioned his patriotism and sense of duty. The former Air Force pilot said the military and veterans would prefer a commander in chief who had been in uniform.

Perry said Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, would commit a “treasonous” act if he “prints more money” and threatened Lee Marvin justice. “We would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas,” he said.

Obama batted away the Texan, as did Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, who said, in a reference to a comment Perry once made about Texas going independent: “We may disagree with our political opponents, but we certainly think they’re all patriots – even those who wanted to secede from the union.”

In Cannon Falls, Minnesota, the president compared negotiating with House Republicans to negotiating with his wife.

“In my house,” Obama noted, “if I said, ‘You, know, Michelle, honey, we got to cut back, so we’re going to have you stop shopping completely. You can’t buy shoes; you can’t buy dresses; but I’m keeping my golf clubs.’ You know, that wouldn’t go over so well.”

In Decorah, he said: “Everybody cannot get 100 per cent of what they want. Now, for those of you who are married, there is an analogy here. I basically let Michelle have 90 per cent of what she wants. But, at a certain point, I have to draw the line and say, ‘Give me my little 10 per cent.”’

Maybe Michelle should be the one negotiating with the Republicans.